Maud Howard

A carte-de-visite portrait of the English actress and singer Miss Maud Howard who appeared in a number of London productions during the 1870s and early 1880s, including Valentine and Orson and St George and the Dragon.

She appears on the 1881 census, a lodger at 88 Lambeth Road in Southwark. Born in Bloomsbury, she was 26 years old at the time of the census, so was born in 1855.

In 1885 she was named as the co-respondent when Mrs Louisa Johnson petitioned the court for the dissolution of her marriage to James Johnson, ‘a gentleman who managed exhibitions at various places.’ According to one report, ‘In the year 1880 the respondent formed the acquaintance of a young woman who acted on the stage as Maud Howard, and he lived with her as his wife. […] In 1884 the respondent was managing an exhibition at the Crystal Palace, and [Mrs Johnson] and her daughter went there and enquired for Mr Johnson. He, however, was not there, and a conversation ensued between her and the clerks, when she ascertained that the respondent had passed Miss Howard off as his wife. […] Mr Justice Butt pronounced a decree nisi, as prayed by the petitioner, with costs’ (St James’s Gazette, 5 May 1885).

Photographed by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.