Claude Ramsay
(b. Haigh (Wigan), Lancashire, **/03/1890 - d. South Africa, **/**/1965). According to the British Census, Claude Ramsay Rawcliffe, the son of a collier, was a music student in 1911. In 1913, he married Mabel Mary Bickley, who had previously been married to Charles Burmester, then a functionary in the government of the Orange River Colony. After first having joined him when he moved to Canada, she had divorced him in 1911. Her family seems to have settled in South Africa and the newly-married couple may have come out to join them. At this stage it is not known whether Ramsay had much of an acting career, but in 1918 he played King Solomon opposite Edna Joyce as the Queen of Sheba in H. Lisle Lucoque's film version of King Solomon's Mines, produced for African Film Productions. In 1921 he and Mable were divorced and he subsequently married Nessie Avis, who predeceased him in 1953. (FO)
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