New York

                 Me and my wife Agnes Robertson was forced to leave England. We settled in New York, and I began to make a name for myself there with spectacular melodramas including The Poor of New York (1857) and The Octoroon, or Life in Louisiana (1859). The Colleen Bawn (1860), with its comic stage Irishness, was a huge success.     

                After the death of my wife, I returned to London, staging plays at the Adelphi in partnership with the actor-manager Benjamin Webster, but soon afterwards a new venture sent me into bankruptcy. I renewed success came when I transposed The Poor of New York to his native land to become The Poor of Liverpool. Back in New York another Irish play, The Shaugraun, was another hit in 1874. In it I took the title role of Conn, the boozy but benign Irishman.