James William Whitbread

James was born in Colewort Barracks, Portsmouth, the son of a gunner in the Royal Artillery and one of seven children. In 1861, his father was posted to Scarborough which became James’s adopted home town.

Throughout his life James or ‘JW’ as he was known, worked as a joiner, actor, theatre agent, touring company manager, theatre manager and lessee, playwright and story writer.

He was best known for two things, firstly his time as the manager of the Queen’s Royal Theatre, Dublin, whose fortunes he transformed between 1884 and 1907. Secondly, he was known as a playwright who, between 1881 and 1915, wrote at least 21 plays and co-wrote two more.

He made Dublin his home for over 20 years when both he and the Queen’s theatre were known for their ‘Irish’ plays. His partnership with Andrew Kennedy Miller between 1889 and 1906, whose touring company first produced 15 of JW’s plays which, along with his other plays were toured extensively, was incredibly successful.

Today, however, like many of the melodramatic playwrights of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he is virtually unknown. That is perhaps partly because melodrama went out of fashion very quickly and is a rather maligned genre today.

Also, possibly because he was English and died in England, JW was virtually ignored by the Irish press when he died, a rather shameful omission.