Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/388

Stirling chief and by the government of New South Wales. His report of further explorations in 1827 determined the government to attempt a settlement in Western Australia, and in October 1828 he was appointed to command a party of intending colonists. The expedition sailed in the spring of 1829, and reached its destination in August. The sites of two towns, Freemantle and Perth, were marked out, and within four months of its foundation the colony had a population of thirteen hundred. Stirling remained governor of Western Australia till 1839, when the apparent imminence of a war with France led him to resign the appointment in order to return to active service. From 1840 to 1844 he commanded the Indus, of 78 guns, in the Mediterranean, and from 1847 to 1850 the Howe, of 120 guns, on the same station. On 8 July 1851 he was promoted to be rear-admiral. He was commander-in-chief in China and the East Indies from January 1854 to February 1856, during the war with Russia, which, however, scarcely interfered with the routine of the station. He became vice-admiral on 22 Aug. 1857, and admiral on 22 Nov. 1862. He was a Knight Grand Cross of the Redeemer of Greece, and died on 22 April 1865. He married, in 1823, Ellen, daughter of James Mangles of Woodbridge, and by her had a large family. His daughter, Georgiana Janet, married first Sir Henry Tombs [q. v.], and secondly Sir Herbert Stewart [q. v.]

[O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict.; Gent. Mag. 1865, i. 801; Jenks's Hist. of the Australasian Colonies, ch. vi.; Foster's Baronetage.] 

STIRLING, MARY ANNE, commonly known as, afterwards  (1815–1895), actress, the daughter of Captain Kehl, a military secretary at the war office, was born in July 1815 in Queen Street, Mayfair, London, and was, it is said, educated at the catholic seminary, Brook Green House, Hammersmith. Her first appearance was made unobtrusively at the Coburg Theatre, then managed by Davidge, where, under the name of Fanny Clifton, she carried messages and the like. Her first part of importance was Amelia Wildenheim in ‘Lovers' Vows,’ adapted from Kotzebue. She is said to have been in the ballet at the Surrey in 1827. At the East London Theatre, Commercial Road, she opened early in 1832 in John Stafford's ‘Pretender, or the Rose of Alvery,’ and Dimond's ‘Hunter of the Alps,’ her principal business being comedy and ‘singing chambermaids.’ On Easter Monday 1832, at a salary of 3l. weekly, she opened for leading business at the Pavilion Theatre, under Farrell, as Susan Oldfield in ‘Speed the Plough,’ and as Patrick in O'Keeffe's one-act musical farce ‘The Poor Soldier.’ Here she met Edward Stirling or Lambert (see below), who was playing ‘walking gentleman.’ Soon afterwards she married him, and went with him to Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, where she became a favourite. Her first appearance in the west-end was at the Adelphi, where, as Mrs. Stirling from Birmingham, she succeeded Mrs. Nisbett, her manager, as Biddy Nutts in Buckstone's ‘Dream at Sea.’ A prominent position was thus at the outset assigned her. She was a brilliantly pretty woman, with much grace and propriety of style, carriage, and diction. In the ‘Ghost Story’ by Serle, ‘Luke Somerton,’ ‘Catching an Heiress,’ and the ‘Dream at Sea’ she played soubrette and low-comedy parts, and as Lady Randolph in William Leman Rede's ‘Douglas Travestie’ essayed burlesque. In May 1836 she played at the St. James's the heroine of a burletta entitled ‘Love and Charity.’ In Leman Rede's ‘A Flight to America, or Ten Hours in New York,’ she made, at the Adelphi, a great hit as Sally Snow, singing negro and patter songs, her associates being T. D. Rice, Yates, John Reeve, and Buckstone. Other parts were played at the Adelphi, the St. James's, and elsewhere; and Mrs. Stirling then accompanied W. J. Hammond, the manager of the Strand, to Drury Lane, where he soon beggared himself. Here in November she failed as Beatrice in ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ and in December made a success as the heroine of ‘A Night in the Bastille,’ a translation by T. Archer of Mlle. de Belle-Isle. In 1840, at the Haymarket under Webster, she took Helen Faucit's part of Clara Douglas in ‘Money’ (in which her ‘freshness’ was praised by Macready), and in 1841 Mrs. Glover's rôle of Mrs. Franklin in the same piece. In Macready's second season at Drury Lane she was, on 1 Oct. 1842, Celia in ‘As you like it.’ She played during the season, among other parts, Sophia in Holcroft's ‘Road to Ruin,’ Mrs. Foresight in Congreve's ‘Love for Love,’ and acted with Keeley and C. J. Mathews in Selby's ‘Eton Boy.’ At the Strand, in June 1843, she was the first Mrs. Blandish in Lunn's ‘Rights of Woman,’ playing other parts. She failed in January 1844 at Drury Lane as Queen Anne in ‘Richard III.’ Rejoining Macready at the Princess's in 1845, she was a poor Helen in the ‘Hunchback,’ but made a success as Cordelia to his Lear. In 1846 she was Dot in the version of the ‘Cricket or the Hearth’ given at the Princess's Theatre, played Julie de Mortemar in a revival of