Wood, Mrs John

Wood, Mrs John [née Matilda Charlotte Vining] (1831–1915), English actress and manageress belonging to a well known theatrical family, being first cousin to Fanny Vining, the mother of Fanny Davenport. She made her first appearance in Brighton as a child, and had already made a good reputation in the English provinces as an adult actress when in 1854 she went to America, where in New York in 1856 she achieved popularity as Minnehaha in Charles Melton Walcot's burlesque Hiawatha. Widowed in 1863, she took over the Olympic Theatre in New York and ran it successfully for three years, leaving it to make her first appearance on the London stage in 1866 as Miss Miggs in a dramatization of Dickens's Barnaby Rudge. From 1869 to 1877 she was manageress of the St James's Theatre in London, where she was highly respected by her company and her audiences. She made her last appearance in New York under Daly in 1873, and thereafter was seen only in London. She was at the Royal Court Theatre from 1883 to 1892, appearing in the first productions of Pinero's farces The Magistrate (1885), The Schoolmistress (1886), and Dandy Dick (1887). A woman of liberal views, she ruled her company kindly but firmly and spared no expense in the running and equipping of her theatre and actors.