Came on this little gem on ebay this morning. Chuckle. One for all those who think cross-dressing is something frightfully modern :-)
This is Scottish 'dame comedian' Harry Josephs in the role of Dame Hatley in the burlesque of Black-Eyed Susan, possibly at Lina Edwin's Theater (12 September 1870). Miss Edwin of course played Susan and Stuart Robson was Captain Crosstree.
However, Josephs played this role frequently, in America and originally in Britain, and this may be another production.
[William] Henry Josephs was born in Greenock 11 June 1845, a child of W H Josephs, theatre manager. It was an ill-fated family. His sisters Fanny (France Adeline) Josephs (1843-1890) both became and Patti (Eliza Stuart Patti) Josephs (1849-1876) became popular as actresses on both sides of the Atlantic, and both had premature deaths. Harry did not escape the rule. He died of a heart attack in Boston on 5 September 1880, barely 35 years of age.
He began his career as Dick Whittington's cat and Harlequin in pantomime in 1864, played with the Morton Price/Catherine Lucette company, with whom he first played Dame Hatley at Sadler's Wells in 1865, and at the Liverpool Prince of Wales, before crossing to America's Selwyn Theatre where he established himself as a comic actor before taking on the role of Barbara Badger in The Spirit of Seventy-Six. When a Paul Pry burlesque was mounted, he was 'Nancy Rouse' ('one of his quaint pictures of femalke eccentricities'). He rejoined the Price/Lucette troupe at the Park Theatre, and then Lina Edwin's (Lisa in Sonnambula burlesque, Thames Darrell in Little Jack Sheppard) and played with Lisa Weber's burlesque company -- Azucena in Ill Treated Trovatore, Clorinda in Cinderella. When Evangeline became popular, Harry found another congenial dame role in the part of Catherine.
His dame Hatley seems from this photo to have become a little more refined and Danny-La-Rue-ish than the original eccentric comic version of E J Odell.
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