This is a copy of the cabinet photograph by Bradley and Rulofson, 429, Montgomery Street, San Francisco, of the English sisters Alice Dunning Lingard and Harriet Sarah Dunning (who used the stage name Dickie Lingard), as Henriette and Louise, the two supposed orphan girls in The Two Orphans by Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Corman, a five-act melodrama set during the French Revolution. It would have been taken during the run of the play at the California Theatre, San Francisco, where it was advertised in an article in The Daily Alta, California, 25 August 1875.

Born in London, Alice Dunning (1847-1897) made her debut at the Grecian Theatre in 1866, the same year that she married in Bristol the actor and music hall singer William Horace Lingard (1839-1927), born in Bristol William Redworth Needham. Lingard took both sisters to the USA in 1868 where he made his debut at New York’s Opera Comique in April 1868. By the summer of 1869 Lingard was managing Selwyn’s Theatre, Boston, where both sisters appeared in John Courtney’s Time Tries All, and Alice was also appearing as Pippo in The Maid and the Magpie by Samuel Arnold.

Lingard established a successful career as a comic vocalist and theatre manager in the USA. In 1872 he bought a house in New York and established the touring company The Lingard Comedy and Burlesque Troupe that appeared in Australia twice, in 1876 after a 40-week tour in the USA, and in 1879. During the 1876 tour Harriet (1850-1938), married the London-born journalist working on The Sydney Echo, Davison Dalziel (1854-1828), Baron Dalziel of Wooler.

Back in London Alice Lingard appeared again in The Two Orphans, at the Adelphi Theatre from 12th to 18th June 1894, but this time as the Countess of Linières, with Ellis Jefferys as Henriette, the part she had played in the USA, and Marion Terry as Louise.


Photography was a novel and exciting development in Victorian days. Most actors and actresses had studio photographs taken, in everyday dress or theatrical costume, for ‘cartes de visite’, and later ‘cabinet cards’. Both were albumen prints made from glass negatives, attached to stiff card backing printed with the photographer’s name.

‘Cartes de visite’, the size of formal visiting cards, were patented in 1854 and produced in their millions during the 1860s when it became fashionable to collect them. Their subjects included scenic views, tourist attractions and works of art, as well as portraits. They were superseded in the late 1870s by the larger and sturdier ‘cabinet cards’ whose popularity waned in turn during the 1890s in favour of postcards and studio portraits.

This photograph comes from a large collection of ‘cartes de visite’ and ‘cabinet cards’ removed from their backings and mounted in albums by Guy Tristram Little (d.1953) who bequeathed them to the V&A. A collector of greetings cards, games and photographs, Guy Little was a partner in the legal firm Messrs Milles Jennings White & Foster, and the solicitor and executor of Mrs. Gabrielle Enthoven, whose theatrical collection formed the basis of the Theatre Collections at the V&A.