Biography

Samuel Butler (1750-1812)

Samuel Butler, a twenty-three year old former stay-maker from York, married the forty-six year old, Tryphosa Brockell in 1773 to become the manager of a theatre company which developed one of the most successful northern theatre circuits of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Butler’s company catered to the North Riding towns of Richmond, Northallerton, Ripon, Whitby and the fashionable spa-town of Harrogate for the summer season, plus Beverley in the East Riding. Every other year, his company also travelled across the Pennines to perform in Kendal in Westmoreland and Ulverston in Northern Lancashire. North Yorkshire’s Richmond Georgian Theatre Royal opened in September 1788 and is the oldest working theatre in its original form in Britain.

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