DOROTHY was the youngest of seven children when she was the final child of Mary Jane Horcott and Frederick Walter Abraham.
She was born in a mansion, the historic Elmfield House, where her family were living in 1915. Her father was a road foreman for Teddington Council, who owned the building at that time.
Always referred to by her parents, and brothers and sisters as Dolly, she was a huge family favourite. And when her sister Mabel died from the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1919, aged 7, she was probably doted on even more.
She attended St Leonards School in Hythe.
Her mother was a very good piano player and practiced every morning. Dolly soon emerged as a very talented soprano singer, influenced by her beloved mother and two older sisters Elsie and Hilda, who also sang.
Dorothy was the only child who was not thrown into the big wide world when leaving school.
Instead her parents paid for her to train professionally at Italia Conti in London and a neighbour in Longbridge Terrace, Hythe, remembers hearing her practicing at home.
Gwendoline Brice said: "She had the most wonderful voice.
"You could hear her right down the street. It was beautiful."
But Dolly gave up the stage school in 1934 to nurse her sick mother, who was suffering from cancer and eventually died on October 26 that year.
"She was my inspiration," Dot would later say.