Amy Coleridge

Amy Coleridge (25 May 1864 – 4 August 1951) was a British actress who had a successful career playing in Shakespeare's plays in South Africa as well as in her home country. She acted in the companies of Henry Irving and John Martin-Harvey.

Amy Coleridge - The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (1886)

She was born as Amy Matilda Cowlrick at St Pancras in London in 1864,[1] the daughter of Adelaide née Jackson (1839–) and Charles Cowlrick (1837–1922), a commercial clerk.

She married the English actor William Haviland in Chicago on 1 February 1884. They had two children, the actor Frederick Alexander Irwin (1884-1924) and Ellen Winifred Irwin (1887-) but were divorced in 1904 following her adultery with the actor Percy Anstey (1876–1920).[2] In 1886 she and her husband were at the Lyceum Theatre in the company of Henry Irving for whom she played Alice in Faust (1886),[3] Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing,[4] and Julie Lesurques in The Lyons Mail (1893).[5] She acted in The Lady of Lyons alongside her husband in John Martin-Harvey's Lyceum Theatre Company tour of the provinces in 1888.[6]

She and Haviland returned to South Africa as members of the Holloway Theatre Company in 1895 where she played Desdemona in Othello and Cordelia in King Lear on tour.[7] In 1897 she returned to tour South Africa with the Haviland and Lawrence Shakespearian & Dramatic Company in their season of Shakespearian plays directed by her husband William Haviland and co-starring Haviland and his co-manager Gerald Lawrence.

By 1900 she and her husband William Haviland were in London with the company of John Martin-Harvey, for whom she appeared as Marie in Louis XI at the Lyceum Theatre (1900),[8] joining him for his sixth tour of America in 1902 in three productions: A Cigarette Maker's Romance, The Children of Kings and The Only Way.[9][10][11] She appeared opposite Martin-Harvey as Margaret Hungerford in The Breed of the Treshams (1903).

In 1906, after her divorce from Haviland, she married the actor Percy Anstey.[12] After divorcing Anstey she married Archibald Brough Pearce (1897–1962) in 1915.[13] She is believed to have returned to South Africa to act for Leonard Rayne for some years, later becoming a speech and drama teacher.

Amy Coleridge died in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa on 4 August 1951.

Reference
  1. 1901 England Census for Amy Haviland London: Chelsea - Ancestry.com (subscription required)
  2. England & Wales, Civil Divorce Records, 1858-1918: 1904 - Ancestry.com (subscription required)
  3. Programme for Henry Irving's production of Faust - 16 April 1887 - the Glenn Christodoulou Theatre Collection
  4. J. P. Wearing, The London Stage 1890-1899: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel, Rowman & Littlefield (2014) - Google Books p. 49
  5. Wearing, The London Stage 1890-1899, p. 162
  6. Tour of The Lady of Lyons (1888) - Theatricalia website
  7. Shakespeare in South Africa: The Earlier Twentieth Century - Internet Shakespeare Editions
  8. Wearing, The London Stage 1890-1899, p. 16
  9. Amy Coleridge and Broadway (1902) - broadwayworld.com
  10. Amy Coleridge and Broadway (1902) - Internet Broadway Database
  11. Amy Coleridge - Playbill
  12. England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837-1915 for Amy Matilda Cowlrick: 1906, Q4-Oct-Nov-Dec - Ancestry.com (subscription required)
  13. England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837-1915 for Amy M Cowlrick: 1915, Q1-Jan-Feb-Mar - Ancestry.com (subscription required)
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