Horace Wigan
(1819-1885)

Born in Blackheath on 19 February 1819 and baptised at St Alphage in Greenwich on 19 March 1819, Horace Wigan was the son of James Wigan, a teacher of languages and at one time Secretary of the Dramatic Author’s Society. The actor-manager Alfred Wigan was his older brother. 

When he married Emma Herbert Thompson on 24 June 1844 at St George’s in Southwark he gave his profession as ‘Schoolmaster.’

His first appearance on the stage was in Dublin on 1 August 1853 as Billy Lackaday in Sweethearts and Wives. He made his London début the following year at the Olympic under the name of Danvers though he soon reverted to his birth name. 

When the census was taken in 1861 he and his wife Emma were living at 206 Euston Road in London with their daughter Jane, aged 15, and one servant. Horace gave ‘Comedian’ as his profession. 

His first distinct theatrical success was in March 1863 as the original Hackshaw, a detective, in Tom Taylor’s The Ticket-of-Leave Man. In 1864 he became the manager of the Olympic Theatre. 

According to his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (1900), he was ‘a quiet, stolid, undemonstrative actor, whose chief success was obtained in detective parts which called for no display of emotion. […] He was a fair linguist and translated many pieces.’ His most successful play was Friends or Foes, adapted from Nos Intimes by Victorien Sardou, first produced at the Olympic Theatre on 8 March 1862. 

Horace Wigan died on 7 August 1885 at ‘Woodbank,’ the home of his son-in-law Albert Hernu in Sidcup, Kent. He left an estate valued at £384. 

‘We have to announce the decease of Mr Horace Wigan, who expired on Friday morning, at Sidcup, Kent, in the house of his son-iin-law, with whom he resided. For some time past he had been considerably out of health, but the fatal termination of his illness was not so soon expected, and he died somewhat suddenly’ (Reynold’s Newspaper, 9 August 1885).