Jimmy Rogers
(1821-1863)

A giant of the mid-Victorian stage who achieved enormous success, Jimmy Rogers was a comic actor ‘of repute in his line and a great favourite with his audiences’ (The Times, 9 February 1857). The theatre critic Clement Scott wrote that: ‘The humour of Rogers was gentle and exquisitely pathetic.' Elsewhere, an anonymous reviewer contributing to the journal Fun under the name ‘The Odd Man’ commented that Rogers ‘always looks and talks so funnily under the pressure of any mental or physical disturbance, that the audience of that theatre must recognise in him one of the most pleasant of pains-taking actors’ (14 February 1863).

He died on 15 April 1863. 'We have to convey to our readers the painful intelligence that this clever comedian, who has afforded them so much amusement, expired on Wednesday evening at six o'clock, at his residence, Shaftesbury-crescent, Pimlico. Those who have known the declining state of his health for some time past will receive the announcement with less surprise than regret, for though he continued to exert his mirth-creating powers to the very last, it was too apparent to those about him that his physical energies were completely exhausted. On the evening previous he had struggled through the part of Effie Deans, which he had to play in the travestie of the "Great Sensation Trial" at the St James's Theatre, and on his return he was so completely prostrated that he was unable to make any further effort, and rested in an arm-chair through the night, without taking off his clothes. The next morning, fancying that he had recoverd a little, he took his violin and practised a song that he was going to introduce into the burlesque, but as the day advanced he became so weak, and breathed with such difficulty, that he at last felt compelled to send a messenger to the Theatre intimating that he should be unable to play. Clasping his wife's hand, and turning to a friend whom he had invited to accompany him that evening to the Theatre to see his performance, he said, with a feeble effort to cheer them by a smile, and in his peculiarly characteristic manner, "The little raffle is over," and soon after expired. Although for years he had suffered from a complication of most painful disorders, his last moments were comparatively free from suffering' (The Era, 19 April 1863).