Miss Campbell

A carte-de-visite portrait of a young woman wearing an elegant riding habit, under which her waist is very obviously corseted. A printed caption recto in the lower margin identifies her as ‘Miss Campbell’ so she was almost certainly a performer of some kind, probably an actress. It is possible that she is dressed here as the hunting-mad Lady Gay Spanker in a revival of Dion Boucicault’s London Assurance, first performed at the Theatre Royal in 1841. It is, however, just as likely that she’s wearing a riding habit simply because she thought it flattering, or because she’d just been riding in Rotten Row.

Photographed by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.