October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

Ira Aldridge was an American and later British stage actor and playwright who made his career after 1824 largely on the London stage and in Europe, especially in Shakespearean roles. Born in New York City, Aldridge is the only actor of African-American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage honoured with bronze plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. He was especially popular in Prussia and Russia, and at the time of his sudden death at the age of 60 he was on tour in Poland.

Aldridge was born in 1807 in New York City, where he attended a charitable school for the children of free black people and slaves. In the early 1820s he performed onstage with the African Company, who built the first resident African-American theatre in the United States which came under protests, attacks, and parody by neighbours, competitors, and even the Sheriff of New York. 

In the face of this discrimination, Aldridge emigrated to Liverpool, where he invented a story of that he was descended from African princes, and for a time he took the name of Keene, after the popular British actor, Edmund Kean. At the age of 17, he appeared on the London stage in Othello and his career took off, though he still faced prejudice.

In 1831 Aldridge successfully performed in Dublin and around the UK, and in 1852 took on his first tour to continental Europe, including Germany, Budapest, Serbia, and Imperial Russia. He applied for British citizenship in 1863, and shortly before his death was planning to return to America to perform there.

Aldridge married an Englishwoman, Margaret Gill, in 1824, and they lived in Upper Norwood in London. In 1857 he was successfully sued by a fellow actor William Stothard, who accused him of having an affair with his wife and fathering her child. On Margaret’s death forty years later married his mistress, the self-styled Swedish countess Amanda von Brandt – they had four children, one of whom died in infancy. The remaining three went on to have musical careers.

Aldridge in August 1867 while visiting Łódź, Poland, and was buried in the Old Evangelical Cemetery there.

More about Ira Aldridge at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Aldridge