Joseph Vernon

From his days as a boy soprano, he had a successful career on the London stage, interrupted only by the aftermath of an underage wedding to a colleague.

As a boy he had a fine soprano voice, and on 23 February 1751 he sang at Drury Lane Theatre in Thomas Arne's Alfred.

On 22 May he took part in Queen Mab, the pantomime by Henry Woodward; on 20 September in the funeral procession in Romeo and Juliet; and on 19 November in The Shepherd's Lottery, an opera by William Boyce.

[4] The curate John Grierson, who had carried out the marriage, received the same sentence: Vernon had testified at the trial, and was then hissed on stage.

[6] He was also assigned some characters in comedy and farce: Colonel Bully in The Provoked Wife; Master Stephen in Every Man in his Humour; Sir John Loverule in The Devil to Pay, a ballad opera by Charles Coffey, and Sharp in The Lying Valet by Garrick.

[1] Vernon's last performances were Artabanes in Artaxerxes, First Bacchanal in Comus, and Truemore in The Lord of the Manor by Jackson of Exeter, 1780.