page_title: Nelly Bromley
section_title: Life and early career
hierarchical_section_title: Nelly Bromley / Life and early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Nelly Bromley 1850-1939, English Actress.
context_page_description: Eleanor Elizabeth Emily Bromley was an English actor 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.
context_section_description: 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 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. Like her mother, she soon appeared in many of the West End theatres including the Globe, Olympic, Royal Court, the Gaiety and the Strand. 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.
caption: Nelly Bromley
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