Kate Josephine Bateman

Kate Josephine Bateman (Mrs. Crowe) (October 7, 1842 – April 8, 1917) was an American actress. She was born at Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman, an actor and theatrical manager. Her mother, Sidney Frances Bateman, was also an actress as was her maternal grandfather Joseph Cowell. With her sister, Ellen (later Mrs. Greppo), she appeared on stage almost in infancy and exhibited unusual talent. In 1856, the Bateman children retired from child acting. Ellen Bateman never returned to the stage, retiring permanently after her marriage to Claude Greppo in 1860.

In March 1860, the sixteen-year-old Kate Bateman returned to the stage in her mother's adaptation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline at the Winter Garden in New York City. This role launched Bateman to stardom and she eventually fell into the usual "romantic" roles, such as Shakespeare's Juliet, Pauline in The Lady of Lyons and Julia in The Hunchback.

Bateman's "greatest dramatic triumph" as an actress, was her role as the title character in Leah the Forsaken, Augustin Daly's adaptation of Mosenthal's Deborah. The play opened at Niblo's Garden in New York on January 19, 1863; it was extremely popular despite horrible reviews from dramatic critics. Bateman became identified with role of Leah, her emotional performance and "the bloodcurdling curse she hurled at her faithless Christian lover". She acted on stage in New York in 1862, and made a remarkable success as Leah in London in 1863.

She married George Crowe (1841-1889), son of Eyre Evans Crowe, the former editor of the London Daily News, in 1866, then left the stage, but later revived Leah in 1868 at the Haymarket Theatre in London. She later played the role of Lady Macbeth with Henry Irving and in 1875 took the title-part of Tennyson's Queen Mary. When her mother became manager of 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.

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