Caroline Heath

A carte-de-visite portrait of the English actress Caroline Heath (1837-1885), seen here dressed ‘Flor de Lisa’ in Tom Taylor’s The Fool’s Revenge, first performed at the Sadler’s Wells’ Theatre on Tuesday 18 October 1859.

Caroline Heath made her début in 1852 at the Princess’s Theatre, playing the part of Stella in a comedy, Prima Donna. She was about 15 years old. She appears on the 1861 census, aged 24, an ‘Actress’ living with her widowed mother, also Caroline, and her 22-year-old brother, Frank, at 28 Newton Road [off Westbourne Grove] in Paddington. She gave ‘Islington’ as her place of birth.

By 1871, she was married to the actor Wilson Barrett, who was soon to become the most successful actor on the London stage. The night the census was taken that year, she and her husband were in lodgings at Durham. They described themselves as ‘Comedian’ and ‘Comedienne.'

Photographed in the spring of 1860 by Camille Silvy of London.