But the lure of the stage drew him to Birmingham in 1873, where he put himself forward for a role in a burlesque performance of Don Giovanni and changed his name to Charles Cartwright to avoid being found out by his parents.

He appeared in burlesques and operettas until the arrival of the actress Jennie Lee heralded a move to more serious drama and an opportunity for a stand out role as Chadband in Little Jo, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

[4] He performed in a range of classical plays but found a talent for making villains credible, such as Job Trotter in the Dickens' adaptation, Pickwick.

When the company was back in London, Irving informed Cartwright that his role in the forthcoming Hamlet revival would be that of the servant of Polonius - a part with barely any lines.

[6] Cartwright left Irving's company and travelled to Bombay, where he had been hired to manage the launch programme of 35 musical and theatrical productions at the city's new Gaiety Theatre, which opened on 6 December 1879.

[9] He established himself in London and, in 1883, appeared with Kyrle Bellew and Marie Litton in a hugely successful production of Moths, an adaptation by Henry Hamilton of a novel by Ouida.

He was in 102 consecutive performances[11] of The Silver Falls, winning plaudits for his powerful and clever characterisation of the villain[12] and appeared in long runs of melodrama such as The Bells of Haslemere,[13] The Union Jack and Harbour Lights.

He was also in contact with authors and playwrights, among them Thomas Hardy, with whom he worked in Liverpool, and Oscar Wilde, who asked Cartwright to stage The Duchess of Padua.

At a farewell dinner before his departure, Charles Wyndham and Max Beerbohm Tree delivered speeches rebuffing Clement Scott's incendiary views on acting which he had published in January 1898 as "Does the theatre make for good?

[26] Buoyed by these successes, Cartwright travelled to America for the 1904–05 season, having assembled a group of actors including his brother-in-law Edmund Lyons for a run of Zwangwill's Leah Kleschna at the Manhattan Theatre.

The production of The Proud Laird, a play he had co-written with Cosmo Hamilton, closed after being described by The New York Times as "muckle ado aboot naething".