Marie Effie Wilton, Lady Bancroft (1836–1921) was an English actress and theatre manager. She appeared onstage as Marie Wilton until after her marriage in December 1867 to Squire Bancroft, when she adopted his last name. Bancroft and her husband were important in the development of Victorian era theatre through their presentation of innovative plays at the London theatres that they managed, first the Prince of Wales's Theatre and later the Haymarket Theatre.
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Life and career
Bancroft was born at Doncaster, and as a child appeared on the stage with her parents, who were both actors. Although her birth date is usually given as 1839, in fact she was born in 1836; she appeared as a 6-year-old at the Norwich Theatre on 14 May 1842, reciting a 120-line poem from memory. (In her autobiography Bancroft characteristically took a year off her age, claiming "At the age of five I recited Collins's Ode to the Passions".) Among her early parts was that of Fleance in Macbeth (1846). She made her London début on 15 September 1856, at the Lyceum Theatre, as the boy Henri in Belphegor, playing the same night in Perdita; or, the Royal Milkmaid.
She won great popularity in several boy roles, in burlesques at various theatres, as Cupid in two different plays, and notably as Pippo, in The Maid and the Magpie, by H. J. Byron, at the Royal Strand Theatre (1858). For several years she remained at the Strand, taking numerous parts of the same general type. A benefit performance was given for her in 1859.