Letty Lind

Letitia Elizabeth Rudge, better known as Letty Lind (21 December 1861 – 27 August 1923), was an English actress, singer, dancer and acrobat, best known for her work in burlesque at the Gaiety Theatre, and in musical theatre at Daly's Theatre, in London.

Lind was born at her parents' residence in Birmingham, England, and was christened at Saint Thomas church. Her father, Henry Rudge, was a brass founder and chandelier maker. Her mother, Elizabeth Rudge, was an actress whose career was brief and confined mostly to the Birmingham area. Lind was one of the Rudge Sisters, all of whom became well known performers. Lind also had two brothers who were brass founders.

Lind first appeared on stage when she was about five years old as Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin, then toured with American entertainer and writer Howard Paul and his British wife, Mrs Howard Paul from about the age of ten. The Pauls billed her as "La Petite Letitia." Howard Paul became Lind's lover and fathered two illegitimate children by her: a girl who died in infancy (1878) and a son (Henry Horace Howard Paul Rudge (1880–1969), a tobacco merchant). Lind made her first London appearance under the name "Letty Lind" in Howard Paul's farce, Locked Out at the Princess's Theatre in 1879. In 1881, Lind left Paul's company. It is not clear exactly when their relationship ended, but Paul married Florence Kate Arthur in 1889.

After leaving Paul's company, Lind appeared in London and the British provinces for over twenty years in comedy, farce and pantomime. Lind's first appearance at the Gaiety Theatre was in December 1880 as a background performer in The Nine Days' Queen by Robert Buchanan. In 1882, she played at the Olympic Theatre in The Exiles of Erin, and in Little Miss Muffet at the Criterion Theatre. She returned to the Gaiety in 1882 in A Madcap Prince. She spent much of the next year at Her Majesty's Theatre in a revival of Jacques Offenbach's Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon). She continued to tour the UK for the next few years in Robert Buchanan's drama Storm Beaten, the pantomime Queen of Hearts and George Faucett Rowe's Fun in Bristol, among other shows.

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