John Billington (actor)

John Billington (31 August 1828 – 8 September 1904) was an English actor, for many years a member of the company of the Adelphi Theatre in London.

Such roles included Walter in The Poor Strollers by Watts Phillips in January 1858; Frederick Wardour in Tom Taylor's The House or the Home in May 1859; Hardress Cregan in The Colleen Bawn by Dion Boucicault in September 1860; George Peyton in Boucicault's The Octoroon in November 1861; Ned Plummer in Dot, dramatized by Boucicault from Charles Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth, in April 1862; in March 1863 John Mellish in Aurora Floyd, dramatized by Benjamin Webster; and in December 1867 Walter Wilding in No Thoroughfare by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

In October 1871 at the Olympic Theatre he appeared as Sir Percival Clyde in the first performance of a stage version of Wilkie Collins's novel The Woman in White.

In July 1875 he became manager of the Globe Theatre for a season, and produced Rough and Ready and Benjamin Webster's comedy The Hen and Chickens.

[1] In 1880 at the Gaiety Theatre he appeared as Ione Hessel in the original performance of Quicksands by William Archer.

A scene from No Thoroughfare (1868); Billington, as Walter Wilding, is second from right.