07/25/2026
Here's a nice clipping from the Feb 28, 1880 Dallas Daily Herald that I found while looking for something else (of course). It's promoting a performance in Dallas of the Royal Marionettes on March 3d, 4th and 5th of 1880. Sorry, you have to click on it to read the whole thing. . .
The Royal Marionettes referred to here are the John Till Royal Marionettes (to be fair, he got the billing as always, though the real connection to puppetry heritage was his wife, Louisa, who had been born into the Middleton family. Louisa began performing with Middleton's Royal Marionette Company, which John McCormick describes in The Victorian Marionette Theatre as "central" to any academic discussion of 19th-century marionette theater. )
Till traveled to America with W.J. Bullock's company around 1874 and subsequently worked with Middleton's royal marionette company before establishing himself as an independent performer.
An interesting find and rabbit hole, and no, I haven't found the initial thing I was looking for either.
I did, though, learn that the phrase "the 14th instant" in the first line means that the review cited was in the St. Joseph Herald on the 14th of February, 1880.
