Justice  /  Antecedent

Reflections on 1830s Theater Manager Thomas Hamblin in the #MeToo Era

Over the 1830s, Hamblin transformed the fortunes of the Bowery by featuring melodramas starring young women, but this wasn't without issues.

Bowery Debutant

Over the 1830s, Hamblin transformed the fortunes of the Bowery by featuring melodramas starring young women, all between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, whom he trained and presented as ready-made stars. Clifton was Hamblin’s first Bowery debutant in 1831. Unlike the majority of actresses on American stages, she had not come from a family of thespians, trained for the stage by her parents. For Clifton, a stage career was an avenue out of poverty, an alternative to her mother’s work in the thriving urban sex trade.

Hamblin sought out socially marginal young women to develop for his theater, however their rapid rise from obscurity to starring in a leading New York playhouse did not translate into wealth or professional autonomy. Hamblin exerted extreme control over their careers, binding them with draconian three-year contracts while paying a meager salary.

Clifton’s early career was beset by scandal and competition. In 1833, Hamblin presented a rival debutant, Naomi Vincent, on the Bowery stage. She became his mistress, dying in childbirth in 1835 at the age of twenty-one. Clifton was also rumored to have been Hamblin’s mistress. She was, after all, unmarried, with no respectable parental guardian in sight. Hamblin’s first wife, Elizabeth Blanchard Hamblin, who had come with him from England in 1825, sued for divorce in 1832 on grounds of adultery.

This was a successful bid to regain control over her career, for during their marriage Blanchard Hamblin had “no interest separate from her husband; he received their united salaries, and expended the money as he pleased.” Hamblin tried to use the divorce to push his first wife into retirement — without success — then extort her financially as she commenced a lucrative career as an itinerant. After Vincent’s death in 1835, Hamblin married Louisa Medina, a young woman he employed as an in-house playwright for the Bowery. She died shortly after Missouri Miller, at age twenty-five.

Deranged Mother vs. Noble Protector

Hamblin had a storied reputation as a libertine by the time Missouri Miller sought out his instruction in 1838. Prior to her death, her legal guardian Justice Bloodgood had placed her in Hamblin’s care after she fled from her mother, a notorious prostitute. Missouri Miller had been placed in a boarding school, possibly by her mother, but was determined to become an actress and sought out Hamblin.

After her death, other men in the New York theater business, like English actor-manager James Wallack, and newspapermen in Hamblin’s pocket rallied behind Hamblin, even as public outrage was mobilized in the street. Angry crowds hounded Hamblin, threatening riot and destruction of his property. Hamblin was ultimately exonerated from suspicions of any wrongdoing.