Dickie Lingard and Alice Dunning Lingard

A cabinet card portrait showing the English-born actresses Miss Dickie Lingard (real name: Harriet Dunning) and her sister, Miss Alice Dunning Lingard, as they appeared in The Two Orphans at the California Theatre in San Francisco.

Alice Dunning was born in London in 1847, and she made her début there at the Grecian Theatre. In 1866, when she was nineteen years old, she married William Horace Lingard, a music hall vocalist. Lingard brought her to America in 1868. Her sister, Harriet, born in 1850, accompanied them, making her New York début at the Theatre Comique in 1868 as Mary in A Regular Fix.

In 1878 they appeared in The Two Orphans by Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Corman. A melodrama in five acts set during the French Revolution, the play was a perennial favourite with audiences. It was adapted for the screen many times in the 20th century, most notably by DW Griffith in 1921.

Photographed by Bradley and Rulofson of 429, Montgomery Street, San Francisco,