15 Facts About Mark Melford

Mark Melford's career encompassed the era of the late Victorian farce, the music halls and early British cinema.

Mark Melford was an accomplished comic actor often taking the leading role in his own works.

Mark Melford advertised himself in his early career as an actor able to play the 'heavy lead' or villain, and burlesque, or 'character' parts.

Mark Melford began writing and performing poems, songs, plays and recitations as a Portsmouth schoolboy.

Mark Melford performed his own plays, and he claimed that his tours with Kleptomania, Flying from Justice, Secrets of the Police, were all great financial successes.

In 1912 Mark Melford became involved with the early silent film industry.

Mark Melford wrote, directed, and played in many short films although, apart from an excerpt from The Herncrake Witch, none of his films are known to exist today.

Mark Melford's play Flying from Justice was produced by Neptune Films as a silent black and white movie in 1914, directed by Percy Nash.

Mark Melford was a free thinker, humanist, anti-vivisectionist, animal welfare activist, and supporter of women's suffrage, as documented in Life in a Booth and Something More.

Mark Melford was actively opposed to cruelty towards performing animals and was instrumental in bringing at least one such case, concerning performing elephants, before the courts.

Jackeydawra, his eldest daughter, born Alice Bradshaw Jackeydora Mark Melford, was one of the early British women pioneers of film.

Mark Melford had a fondness for birds, especially jackdaws, jays and magpies.

Mark Melford died on 5 January 1914 and his death was reported widely, even in the New York Times.

Mark Melford was cremated at Golders Green, "the ceremony, in accordance with the deceased artist's expressed wishes, being of the simplest possible character".

Mr Mark Melford appeared as an actor in all of the above films as well as.