Pauline Markham

Pauline Markham , was an AngloAmerican dancer and contralto singer active on burlesque and vaudeville stages over the latter decades of the 19th century. She began by performing juvenile rles in Manchester, made her debut on the London stage atand a year later New York, where for a few years she would find phenomenal success before her career settled into a long steady decline. The critic Richard Grant White once described Markhams singing as vocal velvet and her arms as the lost arms of the Venus de Milo. Markham had studied singing with Manuel Garca at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Markham was born in England and began her acting career at an early age playing principle boy parts at the Princess Theatre, Manchester. She made her London debut, not too many years later, on November 15, 1867 at the Queens Theatre in Wigans The First Night playing Rose, the intended debutant. In late June, 1868 she appeared at the Queens Theatre in another Wigan play, Time and the Hour, of which one London critic said, It is by no means good, and by no means bad.

Source: Wikipedia