Harriet Catherine Fiddes

Harriet Catherine Fiddes born Harriet Catherine Cawse (6 October 1811 – 18 February 1889) was an English singer, actress and singing tutor. She also worked in Australia during her life.

Life Fiddes was born in 1811 in the London area of Bloomsbury. She was the daughter of an actor Mary (born Fraser) and a painter John Cawse. Her elder sister Mary Cawse was also an opera singer.

Harriet and her elder sister Mary studied voice under Sir George Smart. Through Smart they came to the attention of Carl Maria von Weber,

She was in a melodrama about Queen Anne Boleyn, and in 1825 she sang Fly Away, Dove in The Hebrew Family at the Covent Garden theatre that became her own.

She married John Fiddes in 1835. Josephine Fiddes was born in 1839 and there was another child, Frederica, but the marriage failed and Fiddes emigrated to Australia in November 1852 during the years of the Gold Rush. She went on tours that took in California after one to Honolulu. She returned to Britain.

Fiddes died at Frederica's home in Halifax in 1889.