Eliza Newton

Eliza Newton (c. 1837 – 7 February 1882) was a Scottish stage actress.

Early life Newton was born in Dumfries, to a theatrical family. Her father John Newton was a comedian in a number of English theatres. Her grandfather was a theatre manager. She began to act as a child and played juvenile parts in prominent theatres in London, Manchester, Liverpool, and Edinburgh.

Career

On the British stage Newton traveled and performed popular musical and variety shows with her first husband, actor Frederick George Lloyd, brother of Scottish music hall entertainer Arthur Lloyd. A reviewer in 1863, when she was in a show at the New Royalty Theatre in London, commented that Eliza Newton was "not without a natural dash and force of manner, but needs to cultivate the art of self-control."

In the United States Soon after her first husband's death, Newton moved to the United States under the management of J. H. Selwyn. Cinderella (1866–1867), Po-Ca-Hon-Tas (1869), Much Ado About a Merchant of Venice (1869), The Streets of New York (1869), and Poor Humanity (1869).

Newton worked with English theatrical producer Mrs. John Wood at the Olympic Theater, and was with the company of John Brougham when the Fifth Avenue Theatre opened in 1869. She left the Fifth Avenue Theatre and said goodbye to America at New York's French Theater, at a benefit in May 1869. However, decline in her health kept Newton from leaving America; instead, she toured in the United States, especially in the west. and in winter 1879–1880, she appeared at the Sawtelle Theatre in Helena, Montana, in several shows, including The Hidden Hand (based on the Southworth novel), By Stealth, The Danicheffs, Kathleen Mavourneen, Leah, the Forsaken, The Swiss Cottage, The Returned Soldier, and Sketches in India. "It is only justice to say that the lady fully justified the greatest expectations," according to a Helena newspaper account.

Personal life Newton married Frederick Lloyd before she was 20 years old. She was widowed in her twenties. In the United States, she met and married a merchant named W. H. Blackmore. She had two sons.

Eliza Newton died at Bellevue Hospital in New York in February 1882.