Sarah Woolgar

Making her first appearance at Plymouth in May 1836, as Leolyn in The Wood Demon, she quickly acquired a reputation as a "young phenomenon", performing at Halifax, York, Nottingham, and on the Worcester circuit.

Subsequently she studied music, and at Birmingham in 1841, during the visit of Joseph and Mary Ann Wood, the operatic vocalists, sang for five nights as Adalgisa in Norma.

In April 1844 she joined Robert and Mary Anne Keeley at the Lyceum Theatre, London, and after appearing in several light pieces she rendered to great advantage the part of Mercy in Stirling's version of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit.

[1] In the autumn of 1844 the Adelphi reopened under the management of Benjamin Webster and Madame Céleste, and the golden period of Miss Woolgar's career at that theatre began.

At the Haymarket in November (owing to the sudden illness of Madame Vestris) she played Lady Alice Hawthorn, on half a day's notice, in the same author's new comedy Old Heads and Young Hearts.

[1] On the opening of the new Adelphi Theatre on 27 December 1858, Mrs Mellon played Memory in the apropos sketch "Mr Webster's company is requested at a Photographic Soiree", afterwards delivering Shirley Brooks's inaugural address in the same character.

At the Adelphi in September 1860, when The Colleen Bawn was performed for the first time in England, Mrs Mellon played Anne Chute, "winning, perhaps, the foremost honours of the night" (Morley).

In March 1875 she played Mrs Squeers in a revival of Andrew Halliday's version of Nicholas Nickleby, and in the following October Gretchen in Rip Van Winkle, with its author Joseph Jefferson in the title role.

[1] Mrs Mellon died at her residence in Vardens Road, Wandsworth Common, after a very brief illness, on 8 September 1909, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery beside her husband, whom she survived forty-two years.