Revenge of the Kilburn Actors

In June 1905, Grace Hawthorne starred in the title role of the play ‘Josephine’ at the Kilburn Empire. Born in America as Priscilla Cartland, she was discovered by manager William W Kelly who brought her to London in 1886 and gave her the stage name of Grace Hawthorne. Known to his colleagues as ‘Hustler’ Kelly, he made sure Grace was the first American actress to take the capital by storm. They were very successful with a play called ‘A Royal Divorce’. This about Napoleon and the Empress Josephine and was performed across the country for many years from 1891.

With help from Kelly, Grace became the lessee of the Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street and several other theatres but ran into financial difficulties. She wore extravagant costumes which cost £1,500 and had run up debts of £14,000 when she went bankrupt.

Grace and Kelly ended their professional partnership, but William continued touring ‘A Royal Divorce’ with his wife Edith Cole playing the role of Josephine. 

The actor John East said that Grace and the poet the Marquis de Leuville were lovers. East described Grace and the Marquis at the theatre together in their hay day. Grace was as much of a character as de Leuville, always to be found after the show, ‘in her dressing-room lying upon a somewhat mangy leopard-skin rug…compulsively smoking cheroots and busily noting down points in an enormous pig-skinned volume.’ When Grace got up, in a romantic gesture the Marquis would anticipate her leaving and scatter rose petals at her feet.

By 1905 Grace was trying to revive her fame as Josephine by touring with her own version of the play, but her glory days were behind her. At the end of the three-week run the cast assembled at the Kilburn Empire but found that Grace had left without paying them and returned to her home at 15 Montpelier Square in Knightsbridge. 

             The Kilburn Empire about 1905

One of the actors, Uriah Mervyn with support from the other players, went to 46 Cambridge Avenue and took the trunks of scrips, costumes, and props which Grace had stored there while she was lodging in Kilburn. She reported him for theft, and when he refused to return her property, worth about £100, he was arrested by the police and held in goal on remand. 

At the Willesden court on 15 June, and as the whole cast watched, Mervyn told the magistrate what had happened. Her solicitor said Miss Hawthorne was willing to drop the charge if the property was returned. Mervyn was released, and we assume that Grace later agreed to pay the cast. 

After he was released, he gave an interview to a newspaper reporter who asked him how common it was for the cast not to be paid. Mervyn said in his 10-year career it had happened to him three times in Ireland, Stafford, and Keighley near Bradford. Now it was less common because the provincial theatres do not want to close down if the company walk out in the middle of a run. Also, actors are more careful and share information about questionable managers. Every afternoon in Maiden Lane near the Strand, the ‘pros’ assemble to meet and chat about the agencies and rehearsal rooms nearby. ‘We have many ups and downs. I have shared a loaf and a quarter of a pound of corned beef, with a ha’porth of pickles – a sumptuous meal for two, all for six pence – with a man who next week will be drawing the cheers of a big London audience.’ 

We tried unsuccessfully to find Uriah Mervyn but found he was also called Arthur Mervyn, and this was the stage name of Bernard Arthur Mervyn Mercer. His father was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and Bernard was born in Brooklyn New York while his father was based there in 1876. He worked as an actor during the 1890s and 1900s and married fellow actor Rosa Tunnell in 1898. 

In 1910 Bernard had a major change of career. The census shows him as a clergyman and assistant curate at St Alphege in Southwark where he worked until 1912. In 1913 he and Rosa went to Northern Borneo where he became the Archdeacon of Kudat in 1927. The British North Borneo Company brought in many Hakka Chinese to help clear the jungle for coconut plantations. Mercer became one of the few fluent Hakka speaking foreign missionaries and he wrote a book about this Chinese dialect. 

During WWII he was held in a prison camp by the Japanese. He survived and continued his missionary work in Borneo after the War. Bernard and Rosa did not have children, and they retired to the Homes of St Barnabas in Dormans Park Surrey where he died in 1962. We were unable to find a photo of him or Rosa who died in 1973.