Sidney Frances Bateman (March 29, 1823 – January 13, 1881), daughter of Joseph Cowell, an English actor who had settled in America, was married to Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman and also an actor.
She was also the author of several popular plays, in one of which, Self (1857), she and her husband made a great success. After her husband's death in 1875, Mrs Bateman continued to manage the Lyceum until 1878. She later took the Sadler's Wells theatre, which she managed until her death. She was the first to bring to England an entire American company with an American play, Joaquin Miller's The Danites.
Mr and Mrs Bateman had eight children, three of the four daughters being educated for the stage. The two oldest, Kate Josephine (b. 1842), and Ellen (b. 1845), known as the "Bateman children," began their theatrical career at an early age. In 1862, Kate played in New York as Juliet and Lady Macbeth, and in 1863 she had a great success in London as Leah in Augustin Daly's adaptation of Mosenthal's Deborah.
In 1866 Kate married George Crowe, but returned to the stage in 1868, playing later as Lady Macbeth with Henry Irving, and in 1875 in the title-part of Tennyson's Queen Mary. When her mother opened the Sadler's Wells theatre in 1879 Miss Bateman appeared as Helen Macgregor in Rob Roy, and in 1881 as Margaret Field in Henry Arthur Jones's His Wife.
Her daughter, Sidney Crowe (b. 1871), also became an actress. Virginia Bateman (b. 1854), a younger sister of Kate, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, went on the stage as a child, and first appeared in London in the title-part of her mother's play, Fanchetle, in 1871. She created a number of important parts during several seasons at the Lyceum and elsewhere. She married Edward Compton the actor. Another sister was Isabel (b. 1854), well known on the London stage.
Sources
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
