Sarah Matthews: A Poke from the Psychic Facebook

“Overture and Beginners Please”

Miss Sarah Matthews was a surprise package. I had never heard of her before. She had a life of two halves: an actress from our Theatre Royal, Bristol who was ‘discovered’ and became a success on the the London stage during the Regency period. She played everything from ‘breeches roles’ and farce to Shakespeare and opera.  After eleven years she gave up the grind (it exhausted me just writing about it) for a quiet life as the wife of a country vicar.

Do other family historians receive pokes from the ether? This doesn’t happen to me often, but now and again when I am looking through the records some unfamiliar long dead person makes an appearance, several times at random. It is comes like a dig in the ribs with shouts of “Me! Me! Me!” There is nothing for it eventually, but to take the hint. This blog is full of such meanderings off the beaten track.

The ‘case’ of Sarah Matthews is slightly different but I did indeed get a poke. It is the surprising tale of an unlikely couple, a union of Show Business and High Church.

The story begins with me looking for inspiration, surfing old newspapers for Bristol references, when an item in 1808 caught my eye. (This is the literal truth. I only have one functioning eye.) It was under the heading ‘Ireland’, an ’extract of a letter from a gentleman at Waterford to his friend at Bristol dated 8^th May inst.’

To read more download this long read: Sarah Matthews: A Poke from the Psychic Facebook