Helen Ernstone

Helena Cécile Ernstone, (née Hélène Cecilia Schott; circa 1841 Gibraltar – 2 July 1933 Ferndown, Dorset, England) For the next ten years she appeared on the West End stage in juvenile leads. At the Olympic Theatre later in 1869, she was Martha in Little Em'ly by Andrew Halliday, based on Dickens's David Copperfield. The following year she moved to the Globe Theatre in Philomel, part of a double-bill with The Ticket-of-Leave Man, and in the same year, she appeared in Man o' Airlie with Hermann Vezin. Also in 1870, she created the part of Katie Maguire in Inisfallen by Edmund Falconer at the Lyceum Theatre, London and played Lizzie Hexham in another adaptation of a Dickens novel, Our Mutual Friend, at the Opera Comique. The Observer wrote of this production, "Her acting... is poetical in the highest sense.... If we mistake not, Miss Ernstone will occupy a distinguished position on the stage."

In 1873 at Astley's Theatre, Ernstone played the title role in The Fair Rosamond by William Mower Akhurst (1822–1878). followed the next year by Henriette in The Two Orphans by John Oxenford, with Henry Neville and the young Rutland Barrington. In 1875 she created the role of Ruth Leigh in The Detective at the Mirror Theatre (formerly the Holborn). The Times thought the play too long and called for drastic cuts, but added, "Miss Ernstone plays the devoted Ruth in so earnest a spirit that we cannot express without regret our fears that the part will be terribly reduced when the abbreviations of the piece are effected." In 1878 at the Haymarket Theatre, she played Olivia in Twelfth Night The following year, she appeared at the Olympic as Marguerite Duval in a melodrama called Mother and at the Standard Theatre as Margaret Wentworth in Henry Dunbar.