Wynne Albert Bankes

A carte-de-visite portrait of two Cambridge students as they appeared in a production of the Amateur Dramatic Club. The one dressed en femme has been identified as Wynne Albert Bankes.

Born on 31 May 1840, the youngest son of George Bankes of Corfe Castle in Dorset, he graduated BA from Trinity in 1864. Despite his youth, he had already served as a Midshipman in the Navy and seen action during the Crimean War in the Baltic and the Black Sea and at the taking of Sebastopol. His naval career also took him to Botany Bay, the South Sea Islands, much of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, where he took part in the suppression of the Maori uprising.

On leaving university, he was admitted to the Inner Temple on 8 November 1864 and called to the Bar in 1867. He later practised on the Western Circuit. He married Florence Marianna Fane, daughter of Reverend Frederick Fane, on 10 September 1873 and had issue. He died at his home, Wolfeton House in Dorset on 16 April 1913, aged 72.

According to a catalogue at the Dorset Record Office; ‘In his Tudor manor house Albert Bankes always took considerable pride, preserving the famous Spanish oak doorways, and chimney pieces, adding to the beauty of the grounds and frequently entertaining historical and antiquarian societies there. Of his interest in public events and societies there can be no doubt. He had considerable dramatic talent; in 1861 whilst at Cambridge, he was elected a member of the Amateur Dramatic Club founded by Sir Francis Burnand, later editor of Punch, and afterwards he formed another such society in Rome.’

Photographed by the Farren Brothers of Cambridge.