Dudley Docker

Ralph Docker was a solicitor in practice at Birmingham and Smethwick who took on a large number of public appointments, including Coroner for North Worcestershire; at the time of his retirement, two days before his death in 1887, Ralph Docker was the oldest and longest-serving Coroner in England.

Despite Dudley Docker's own strong family loyalties, he was not given to ancestor-worship or devotion to genealogy; the notably brief pedigrees in the Burke's Landed Gentry editions of 1921 and 1937 in which he appears as head of the family of 'Docker of the Gables' contain numerous errors supplied by Docker himself- he provided erroneous information relating to the dates of his father's birth and death, his mother's death, and the name of his maternal grandfather.

The varnish business grew into more general paint supply, and in 1894 the company opened a London office reflecting their success in winning orders from railway and rolling stock companies and Docker developed his interest and success in making deals.

[7] Docker married Lucy Constance, daughter of distinguished Birmingham legal figure John Benbow Hebbert (1809–1887), in 1895.

The benefaction proved significant when the expedition vessel sank and the castaways were forced to use the Dudley Docker for survival.

R P T Davenport-Hines, Dudley Docker: the life and times of a trade warrior, Cambridge University Press, 1984.