Caroline Heath

A carte-de-visite portrait of the actress Miss Caroline Heath (1837-1885).

Miss Heath made her debut in 1852 at the Princess’s Theatre, playing the part of Stella in a comedy, Prima Donna. 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], Paddington. She gave ‘Islington’ as her place of birth.

By 1871, she was married to the actor Wilson Barrett. The night the census was taken that year, she and her husband were in lodgings at Durham. They described themselves as ‘Comedian’ and ‘Comedienne’. Barrett was 26 and Caroline was 34, which would mean she was born in 1837 and would have been 15 when she made her debut.