Walter de Frece

Sir Abraham Walter de Frece (7 October 1870 – 7 January 1935) was a British theatre impresario, and later Conservative Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1920 to 1931.

[1] By 1889, Walter was apprenticed with a notable Merseyside architect, when his father's Gaiety Theatre engaged the 25-year-old Tilly Ball as principal boy in pantomime that Christmas.

[2] Noting the decline in popularity of melodrama, and the increase in music hall revenues, de Frece secured the lease on the Metropole Theatre at Camberwell.

Resultantly, at the end of hostilities and after his knighthood in the 1919 King's Birthday Honours List, de Frece resigned all of his positions, allowing Charles Gulliver to succeed him as managing director of the Variety Theatres Controlling Company.

For the rest of her life she lived as Lady de Frece, and from the mid-1920s the couple made their home on the French Riviera, to assist with her declining health.

He represented Blackpool between the two wars; it was claimed by John Cryer, the Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead, during a House of Commons debate, that Sir Walter only visited the United Kingdom twice a year, once for the Budget speech and again for Ascot and that he had managed to convince his electorate that he was representing their interests by signing a stack of House of Commons notepaper every time he returned.

[3] However, based on entries in Hansard, Sir Walter did make a number of contributions to debates in the House of Commons, initially representing his constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne (from 1920 to 1924), and latterly those in Blackpool from (1924 to 1931).