Yorkshire Almanac The York Herald is conned into posting the American actor Ira Aldridge’s sensational account of his own death

16 August 1845: The York Herald is conned into posting the American actor Ira Aldridge’s sensational account of his own death

1858 portrait by a Ukrainian artist of Aldridge, who toured extensively (Shevchenko 1914).

Ira Aldridge. 1845/08/16. Melancholy Death of the African Roscius. York Herald. York. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Llandillos, July 18. It is with extreme regret I have to inform you of a most melancholy and fatal accident that occurred to Mr. Aldridge, the African Roscius. From the interest you and your friends took in him during his sojourn among you, I feel satisfied that you would sympathise in his friends’ bereavement, and the loss to the stage of one of its most promising ornaments. Mr. A. was returning in his carriage from the seat of Colonel Powell, where he had been driving about, and when within half a mile of this town one of the horses took fright at the blaze of light from the iron-works with which this country is studded; this occurred on the brink of a precipice, over which the carriage swerved with its inmate, dragging the horses and postilion, who had not time to disengage himself. The footman had a most providential escape; he was in the act of alighting to seize the horses’ heads as the carriage was precipitated over the cliff. It is needless to add that Mr. Aldridge, the postilion and horses were killed upon the spot – the carriage being dashed to atoms. The place where this frightful accident occurred is 120 feet from the summit to the bottom. – Correspondent of the Kerry Evening Post.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

From the correction in the Hull Packet:

We are constrained to ask the question, did the black man, who is up to a trick or two in the art of puffery, occasion the account of his own pretended death to be sent to the papers, for the sake of obtaining notoriety – eh? (Hull Packet 1845/08/22)

Among countless other gags, Bernth Lindfors notes Aldridge starring in whiteface and drag in Douglas Jerrold’s comedy Black-eyed Susan (Lindfors 2011).

Apparently he first performed Macbeth and Lear in Hull – in whiteface – but I haven’t found any contemporary accounts.

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Comment

From the correction in the Hull Packet:

We are constrained to ask the question, did the black man, who is up to a trick or two in the art of puffery, occasion the account of his own pretended death to be sent to the papers, for the sake of obtaining notoriety – eh? (Hull Packet 1845/08/22)

Among countless other gags, Bernth Lindfors notes Aldridge starring in whiteface and drag in Douglas Jerrold’s comedy Black-eyed Susan (Lindfors 2011).

Apparently he first performed Macbeth and Lear in Hull – in whiteface – but I haven’t found any contemporary accounts.

Something to say? Get in touch

20 June 1817: Lines spoken by the actor Alexander Cummins at the Leeds Theatre are enacted sooner than he might have wished

19 December 1826: Charles Mathews, comedian, awaiting his fellow actors at York for the evening performance, receives some unwelcome news from a newly arrived foreigner

26 June 1794: The editor of the Sheffield Register fires off a final broadside against Georgian despotism, and flees to the continent and thence to the United States

3 January 1638: On the eve of the civil war, Henry Slingsby witnesses Royalist cavalry exercising near Wetherby on Bramham Moor, scene of the defeat of the Percy Rebellion in 1408

7 January 1397: On the longest of the 42 days of his carnivalesque reign, boy-bishop John de Cave of York goes on a 200-mile begging spree

5 May 1732: William Lindley of Dodworth recalls how charcoal burners would cheat coal merchants at the time of the Restoration

5 April 1676: The Lord saves a Presbyterian from his horse in Craven

18 March 1650: Dorothy Rodes of Bowling (Bradford) blames witchcraft by Mary Sykes for the postpartum illness of her daughter

24 October 1877: Six years after the inauguration of its horse trams, the Leeds Tramways Company tests a steam car by Kitson and Co. of Hunslet

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Comment

This trial followed a long period of more or less successful implementations by other builders elsewhere: the article says that “For some time steam cars similar to this have been used on street tramway lines in Russia and in Germany” (really?), while Daniel Kinnear Clark cites schemes starting in 1859 in the United States, and says that Leonard J. Todd of Leith appears in 1871 to have been the first to build a relatively steam-, smoke-, and noise-free car, like the Kitsons’ (Clark 1894). DKC shows a late 1880s Kitson engine, but doesn’t mention this experiment or its somewhat mixed sequel:

Regular steam car services were not operated, however, until two years later, and then only on routes then being operated by horse cars. Steam trams were not very successful as the heavy engines caused much damage to the very light rails and so were replaced by horse trams again on several routes (Garside 1981).

Re “could travel at a much higher rate of speed than is possible with horses”: speeds were kept low by regulation and/or legislation (Leeds Mercury 1877/03/08).

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