1. Pauline Markham began by performing juvenile roles in Manchester, made her debut on the London stage at 20 and a year later New York as a member of the British Blondes which introduced Victorian burlesque to America, where for a few years she would find phenomenal success before her career settled into a long steady decline.
Pauline Markham had studied singing with Manuel Garcia at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Pauline Markham was born in England and began her acting career at an early age playing principal boy parts at the Princess Theatre, Manchester.
Pauline Markham made her London debut, not too many years later, on November 15,1867, at the Queen's Theatre in Wigan's The First Night playing Rose, the intended debutant.
In October 1869 it was reported in the press that Pauline Markham's investments had made her a fortune on Wall Street.
On October 28,1870, Pauline Markham was seriously injured in a carriage accident in New York on Harlem Street, such that at least one newspaper reported her dead.
Pauline Markham later became so identified with her characterization of the fairy queen Stalacta, that afterwards some chroniclers erroneously listed her among the original 1866 cast.
In 1872 Pauline Markham appeared at Wood's Museum with Belle Howitt in burlesque productions of Who Cried for the Rain, Red Riding Hood, The Three Musketeers and others, including several shows she had previously performed in with Thompson's "British Blondes".
In late November 1873 it was reported Markham had eloped with Randolph M McMahon, a former Southern Civil War officer with a reported rank ranging anywhere from Colonel to Major General.
In May 1874 Pauline Markham was reported singing for private circles in New Orleans and by the summer of 1875, back in London at the Haymarket Theatre supporting Charles Wyndham in a play entitled Brighton.
Pauline Markham played in Dancing Dolls, a variety show at the Globe Theatre in August 1876, before returning to America the next year to tour with Adah Richmond's Burlesque Company.
Pauline Markham denied any involvement with the scheme or that she was acquainted with any of the men mentioned in the papers as members of the South Carolina ring, telling her interviewer that they are not the kind of persons she permits herself to associate with.
Pauline Markham's name was never included among those on the Markham troupe's rolls in 1879.
Pauline Markham married again in 1883 to Randolph Murray, an actor-manager, late of the British Army.
Pauline Markham claimed he was drunk at the time and that his bride deserted him a week later.
Pauline Markham's acting career in America began in the early 1870s at the Cleveland Academy of Music as W C Davenport.
Pauline Markham divorced him in 1891, reportedly on the grounds of infidelity.
In 1897 Pauline Markham attempted a comeback in vaudeville that appears to have ended the following year at Tony Pastor's in dramatic skits with Catherine Dann.
In late 1905 Pauline Markham was reported to be near death with pneumonia though later press clarified it to be a serious case of the measles.
Pauline Markham lived on with her husband for another fourteen years, dying in New York at the age of 71.