Bella Goodall

A carte-de-visite portrait of the British actress Bella Goodall (1851-1884).

Born Isabella Goodall in Liverpool on 10 August 1851, she made a name for herself in her native city when still a teenager and later became a star of the London theatre. She died aged only 32 in North London on 2 February 1884 and was buried in West Norwood Cemetery.

The author and journalist William Henry Rideing reminisced in 1912 about his boyhood in Liverpool, where he remembered Goodall as the reigning soubrette: ‘Then the orchestra would tune up and Miss Goodall, smiling and bowing, would open the most beautiful mouth in the world .... It bowled me over’ [Rideing, Many Celebrities, 1912].

Photographer unidentified.