Mrs Fanny Stirling
(1815-1895)

A carte-de-visite portrait of the English actress Fanny Stirling, known professionally as Mrs Stirling. 

Mrs Mary Anne Sterling, commonly known as Fanny, had a long and successful career, becoming something of a grande dame of the theatre and a great favourite among her fellow thespians. During the 1870s she gave dramatic readings and was Professor of Elocution at the London Academy of Music, but returned to the boards in 1879. She died on 28 December 1895 at 3 Duchess Street, Portland Place, London, leaving an estate valued at £11,736.

'It was probably because her demise was announced under her married name of Lady Gregory that the death, last Saturday, of the famous actress, Mrs Stirling, was not generally known in London until to-day. It was at the end of the last year, a few months after the death of her first husband, that she married Sir Charles Hutton Gregory, the civil engineer, the ages of the two being respectively 78 and 76. Her retirement from the stage, however, took place after the Lyceum season of 1886, when she had enjoyed a stage career of much over half a century. Fanny Clifton was born in London in July, 1816 [sic], and her first appearance was about 16 years later at the old Coburn, afterwards the Victoria Theatre. Here and at the Pavilion she, in accordance with the custom of the period, played an enormous number of parts in tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and even pantomime [...]. Lady Gregory has enjoyed a long and brilliant career, and her recollections of the dramatic celebrities of her time was vivid and keen. Unlike many actresses, too, she was a genuine wit, and the speeches which she annually made in response to the toast of the ladies of the Dramatic Fund banquets were all funny and in excellent taste. Her daughter, Miss Fanny Stirling, was also a professional actress; and Tom Taylor, in 1862, wrote a play  — "A Duke in Difficulties" — with parts (La Joconde) for the mother and (Colombe) for the daughter (Glasgow Herald, 1 January 1896).