Harriet
Vernon (9 October
1858–11 July 1923) was an English actress and singer of the Victorian era who appeared regularly in music hall, Victorian burlesque and pantomime in the 1880s and 1890s. In a career that
spanned five decades, her final appearances were in 1923. Vernon also toured
internationally, appearing in New York, Johannesburg and Berlin. Born in Lambeth in London in 1858 as Harriet Maria
Whitehouse, the daughter of George Hickman Whitehouse (1837–1908), a
printer, and Caroline (née Newport, 1840–1887), she was one of the
leading music hall stars of
the 1880s and 1890s, also performing regularly as the principal boy in pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
In 1888 she appeared as Robin Hood in Babes in the Wood at Drury Lane with Sybil Grey, Harry Payne and Dan Leno as the Dame. Her first professional engagement was as Harriet
Vernon in January 1875 at The Star Music Hall in Bermondsey. On 28 February 1875 in Southwark in London, aged 16, she married William Thomas
Gillett (1853–1933), an optician. Her children were Edward George Gillett
(1876–1953), Ada Mary Ann Gillett (1879–), who followed her mother into
burlesque as Ada Vernon, and William Whitehouse Gillett (1881–1933). In 1885 at
the Prince's Theatre in Bristol and the Novelty Theatre in London, Vernon played Cammpi in The
Japs; or, The Doomed Daimio, a burlesque by Harry
Paulton and Mostyn Teddea, alongside Lionel Brough, Willie Edouin and Alice Atherton. In July 1886, she played Sir Thomas Wyatt in
the burlesque Herne the Hunted at Toole's Theatre in London. In 1887, she was divorced from
her husband on the grounds of her adultery with the actor and playwright Mark
Quinton (born Joseph Mark Keogh, 1860–1891). Her husband gained custody of the
children while Keogh and Vernon went on to marry. In 1889, she was
declared a bankrupt. In 1890, she appeared for two months at the Concordia in
Berlin, Germany. She played the title role in the pantomime Abdallah
and the Forty Thieves with Walter Passmore at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, in 1891, and in 1892 she went on a national tour
of the UK. In 1893, 1895 and 1896 she appeared in New York, while in 1896 and
1903 she toured South Africa. On 5 November 1898 Vernon married the actor
Albert Marks (1861–) in Marylebone, London but was divorced from him in 1906 following
her adultery with the actor Leslie Race. In 1907, she was again declared a
bankrupt.Vernon died in 1923 of bronchial pneumonia at the Doncaster Royal Infirmary having
been booked to appear in the touring show '‘Veterans of Variety’' at the Grand
Theatre there. She was buried in an unmarked grave at Hyde Park Cemetery. A headstone was
finally put on her grave with the support of her descendants in 2012.