Mabel Grey

A carte-de-visite portrait of the celebrated courtesan Mabel Grey.

She began her career as a semi-legitimate actress. Her earliest appearance seems to have been in County Galway in February 1867. By November of that year she was appearing in Dublin, and in January 1868 she was on the bill of a pantomime at the Lyceum in London. However, when the management tried to rebook her the following year, she had by then become so notorious that the other actors refused to work with her.

In 1870 she appeared alongside Kate Cooke in a burlesque called Sardanapalus at Astley’s Theatre in Westminster Bridge Road and subsequently at the Windsor Theatre. Simmonds, the theatrical costumier who supplied her costumes for the production, later took both her and Kate Cooke to court for non-payment of debt. Mabel claimed she had received no salary at Astley’s and only played as an amateur. If true, she had presumably taken the gig as another way of marketing herself to men (Belfast Morning News, 2 March 1870).

Photographed by Elliott and Fry of 55 Baker Street, London.