Jean Margaret Davenport

Who was Jean Margaret Davenport?

Jean Margaret Davenport was an English actress.

Her father was a lawyer, but he left the Bar for the Stage, and became the manager of the Richmond Theatre, where Jean made her first professional appearance, in 1837, as Little Pickle in The Manager's Daughter — a piece that is also known as The Spoiled Child, and, in Dion Boucicault's version, as The Young Actress.

She also played in King Richard the Third, being the first representative of that play seen in Richmond Theatre since the death of the great actor Edmund Kean. She played in other cities prior to coming to America in 1838.

Her first appearance in America occurred at the National Theatre, New York, under the management of James William Wallack, the Elder. Afterward she played star engagements in other cities. In 1842 she returned to Europe and traveled in Italy and France. Her education, at that time, was conducted by private tutors.

In Paris, she studied Music under the tuition of García, but decided to pursue a career in Drama. In 1846 she went to the Netherlands, taking an English company, with which she acted at Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, and, in Germany, at Hamburg and Hanover, receiving adulation, acclamation and adoration. That tour occupied two years and was remunerative. In England in 1848 she made her appearance as a public reader, being one of the first females to give readings from Shakespeare since Mrs. Siddons, who died in 1831.