B. M. Croker

Bithia Mary Croker (née Sheppard, 28 May 1847 – 20 October 1920) was an Irish novelist most known for her works concerning life and society in British India. She also wrote ghost stories.

Life

Croker was born in 1847 in Warrenpoint, County Down, Northern Ireland. Her birth year was not publicly known for a long time, which is why later years are also stated sometimes. She was the only daughter of Rev. William Sheppard, the Anglican Church of Ireland rector of Kilgefin, County Roscommon, who was an ex-barrister, and Bithia Mary Sheppard. Her younger brother William Harry Cope Sheppard went on to become president of the Dublin rugby union club Wanderers F. C. Her father died in 1855 after a protracted illness, when Bithia was eight years old. She spent parts of her childhood in Roscommon and was educated at Rock Ferry, Cheshire and in Tours, France. She became famous as a horsewoman with the Kildare Hunt.

In 1871, she married John Stokes Croker, an officer in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and later the Royal Munster Fusiliers, in Rathangan, County Kildare, and they lived there for some time in Oakley House. Soon after, Croker followed her husband to Madras and then to Bengal. Exclusive of trips home, she lived in India for 14 years between 1872 and 1892. Her only child, Gertrude Eileen Celeste Croker, was born in Bangalore in December 1872 and baptized in Madras in January 1873. Eileen was later also educated at Rock Ferry, married Albert Edward Whitaker and was appointed MBE. Croker spent some time in the hill station of Wellington now in Tamil Nadu, where she wrote many of her works, having begun to do so as a distraction during the hot season. After her husband's retirement with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1892, the couple moved to Lordello House in Shankill (not Bray, County Wicklow, as often stated) south of Dublin, then to London, and finally to Folkestone, Kent, where her husband died in 1911. Croker remained immensely interested in reading, travel and theatre. She died at 30 Dorset Square, London, on 20 October 1920 and was buried in Folkestone.