Hattie Shepparde

Hattie Shepparde (3 August 1846 – 22 September 1874) was an Australian actress who during her short career gained a growing reputation in her native land where she was highly regarded for ‘her intelligence, her ease, the grace of her manner and her thorough devotion to her art’. She died aged 28 after childbirth.

Early life Various legends sprang up about the origins of Hattie Shepparde during her short lifetime including that she was born into a theatrical family, whereas the truth was somewhat more prosaic. She was born as Mary Harriet Langmaid (sometimes Langmede or Langmead) in Launceston, Tasmania the daughter of Amos Langmaid (1809–1894), a former convict but at this time a boot and shoemaker. Amos Langmaid married twice: firstly to Harriet Hill (1812–1874) in Launceston in 1836, and following his divorce from her to Hannah Hall (1831–1905) in 1852 in Melbourne and that between the two wives he fathered fourteen children, not all of whom survived. It is claimed that during her early life she went with her family to California where she was educated at the Convent of San Jose in San Francisco, but it is uncertain for what reason the family may have gone there.

Between 1865 and 1870, she was in New Zealand taking part in a successful tour appearing in ‘all the towns where there was a theatre’ For Duret she also played the Marchioness de Bellerose in The World of Fashion ("Miss Shepparde played the part of the Marchioness de Bellerose with considerable dignity, and gave evidence of a histrionic talent which must render her a favourite member of the company"); Mrs. Delcour in War to the Knife; Countess Beauvilliers in Nothing Venture, Nothing Win; Mrs. Crotchet in the comic drama Don't Lend Your Umbrella, and Prince Pompetti in Cinderella, or the Lover, the Lackey, and the Glass Slipper, a pantomime that used real ponies to draw Cinderella's carriage, sometimes to the amusement of the audience when they misbehaved on stage. For her benefit at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne in June 1873, Shepparde selected T. W. Robertson's Caste in which she played Esther Eccles and was Cynisca in W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea following which she was presented with a diamond bracelet by a Committee of 'influential citizens' at a reception. Her funeral on 25 September caused something of a sensation partly because of the 12 female pallbearers, who were mostly Shepparde's fellow actresses. Such was her fame and popularity at this time that during the burial service at Melbourne General Cemetery there were riots by her female admirers when "a large concourse of people most rudely pushed their way amongst the mourners, jostling them right and left, so as to catch a glimpse of the coffin... and ‘the pall-bearers, who had followed their friend and companion to her last resting place, were rudely thrust on one side that a number of idle women might secure a position to gratify their curiosity.'

Shepparde's mother died less than a month later and was buried in the same grave, while her daughter died in March 1875 and was buried with her mother and grandmother.