Pearl Eytinge

Pearl Eytinge (née Wyckoff; 1854–1914) was a New York-born actress, author, producer, playwright and activist who once said "There is no vice on earth of which I have not partaken".

Pearl’s mother was also part of the bohemian scene, and a published author, writing under the names of Margaret Eytinge, Madge Elliot, Bell Thorne and Allie Vernon.

[3] At the age of sixteen Pearl was writing short stories of her own for Our Young Folks, an illustrated magazine for boys and girls.

She started on the professional stage in 1875, working at the Park Theatre in productions including Davy Crockett and Mighty Dollar.

In the readers’ letter page of the Our Young Folk magazine dated 1871, volume VII, the editor wrote that Pearl had married at the age of sixteen.

Ten years later on the 1 June 1891, Yard married Josephine Marie Siedler in St Martin-in-the-Fields church, London.

[6] He failed and four men were hanged, but in July 1888 he helped Pearl make a plea on behalf of Chiara Cignarale, an Italian immigrant who had shot and killed her abusive husband, Antonio.

[7] Fleron next had to rescue Pearl’s manuscripts from her landlady, a Mrs Benas, who was holding them as security against an outstanding bill of $120.

These documents included Pearl’s first play Two Women; Fleron tried to snatch them back and ended up in jail, but was released next day.

[9] In 1888 Madame Diss Debar was convicted of conspiracy to extort money from Luther R. Marsh, a recently bereaved lawyer of New York, and served six months in prison.

She heard a sermon from the evangelist Dwight L. Moody and sought his advice and found comfort in her final years, but reports indicated she slipped into madness, before dying in Atlantic City in 1914.