Captain Francis Algernon Disney Roebuck
(1819-1885) Captain Francis Algernon Disney Roebuck was, alongside his contemporary Captain Horton Rhys, one of the most well known amateur actors of the 1850s. Roebuck was born at Grove House in Devon, near Teignmouth, the son of Henry Disney Roebuck of Ingress Park in Kent, and came from a family with a long history of service in the army. Roebuck followed family tradition by joining the army in 1837 and became a captain in the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He served in Britain, the West Indies, and Canada, and organised garrison amateur theatricals. In 1841 he married Anne Halloran (Annie died in London in 1898 aged 72). On the 10th July 1855 Disney Roebuck was involved in organising a one-off performance at Campden House of the Wilkie Collins play The Lighthouse, to raise money for the Hospital for Consumption. Charles Dickens played the part of Aaron Gurnock and Collins played the younger Gurnock. Dickens wrote to Roebuck: 'I found your cordial note, which I assure you has given me great pleasure. I am heartily proud of such a tribute from a brother actor, and shall live in the agreeable hope that when we next meet upon the boards we shall play in the same piece.' Throughout the 1850s Roebuck was involved in army theatricals and charity performances. The Queen and Prince Albert attended one of the garrison performances at Aldershot in 1856, and on more than one occasion he guest starred with companies among whom the young Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a member. In 1864 he toured the United Kingdom with his amateur company, the United Service Dramatic Club. Among his most popular roles were in plays adapted from novels by Mary Braddon, such as Robert Audley in Lady Audley's Secret, Henry Dunbar in Henry Dunbar and John Mellish in Aurora Floyd. Other leading roles included Archibald Carlyle in East Lynne, the title role in David Garrick, Salem Scudder in The Octoroon, and Inspector Bucket in Bleak House. In 1867, like Horton Rhys some years earlier, Disney Roebuck decided to become a professional actor and theatre manager and with his company toured the country for six years. In 1873 he then left for South Africa, landing in Cape Town with his theatre company, in November and began to tour the Western and Eastern provinces with his production of David Garrick (1873). ** He leased and ran the Royal Theatre in Cape Town between 1876 and 1883/4, when it burnt down.He returned to London while it was rebuilt and re-occupied it in 1885. *** Among his other major productions were The Octoroon (1876), Hamlet (1876), Pygmalion, Gilbert's Galilea, Our Boys**, ** . Died in Seapoint, Cape Town on 22 March 1885. **
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