Nelly Bromley

Eleanor Elizabeth Emily (Nelly, sometimes Nellie) Bromley (30 September 1850 – 27 October 1939) was an English actress and singer who performed in operettas, musical burlesques and comic plays. She is best remembered today for having created the role of the Plaintiff in Gilbert & Sullivan's first success, Trial by Jury, although she played in that piece for just over three months out of a successful career spanning nearly two decades.

Life and early career Bromley was born on 30 September 1850 in London to an actress and singer, also Eleanor Bromley (1826–1860). The identity of her father is unknown. Her mother was born into the large family of her grandparents John Charles Bromley (died 1839) and his wife Hannah née Shailer. Her mother had begun acting while still a teenager, in 1843, appearing at many of the major West End theatres, especially at the Olympic Theatre. She continued to act until she died in childbirth in 1860. In 1857, she had married Charles Henry Cook. After her mother's death, Bromley and her younger sister, Jessy Cook, were raised by their grandmother Hannah.

Bromley used her nickname "Nelly" as her stage name and, like her mother, began a stage career in her teens. By December 1866, she was acting at the Royalty Theatre in London, playing Dolly Mayflower in a burlesque by F. C. Burnand of Black-Eyed Susan. She remained in the company at the Royalty, acting in other burlesques, including W. S. Gilbert's Highly Improbable and as Nimble Ned in Burnand's burlesque on Claude Duval. She also played in comedies and toured with Edward Askew Sothern. By 1873, she had become popular in H. B. Farnie's musical comedies. In his pasticcio The Black Prince (1874), she and Selina Dolaro played sisters Flossie and Sybil. Bromley acted regularly at the Criterion in a series of long-running English adaptations of French farces: Hot Water, On Bail and, as Rebecca, in the original cast of The Pink Dominos (1877), as well as René in a Farnie and Robert Reece adaptation of Offenbach, La Créole, at the Folly Theatre. In 1879, she created the role of Amy Jones in another hit, Crutch and Toothpick. She returned to the Royalty in 1880, appearing in Venus, an extravaganza by Edward Solomon, Edward Rose and Augustus Harris. She retired from the stage around the same time. In later life, Bromley used her married name, Mrs. Archibald Stuart-Wortley.

Bromley died in Lymington, Hampshire in 1939 at the age of 89.