The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-08-15 00:00:00

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DEATH OF MISS MENKEN.

On Monday afternoon the well known Adah Isaacs
Menken—after having suffered very severely for many weeks
from disease of the lungs—quietly passed away without
mental or physical pain, at half-past two, at her hotel at
Paris, in the presence of two or three friends.

According to her own statement, made some months
ago when she was delivering a lecture, she was born in
New Orleans in the spring of 1841. Her father, Ricardo
Feurtos, a Spanish Jew, was a merchant in that city.
Her mother was a native of Bordeaux. Her maiden
name was Dolores Adios Feurtos. When she was
two ',years of age her father died, and she was
then taken by her mother to Cuba, where she
was brought up in the family of a rich planter. By
and bye her mother died, and finally her benefactor,
leaving her, then aged thirteen, the bulk of his estates.
A suit was instituted in the law courts by the heir-at-
law, and the will was set aside. Left utterly unpro-
vided for, she turned her attention to the stage, and at
the age of fourteen came out at a theatre in New
Orleans, her native city, as a dancer. Her success was
flattering in the extreme, and for upwards of a year she
continued this vocation, appearing in the principal
theatres in the Southern States, anti once in Havannah,
where she again experienced ill-treatment at the hands
of the possessors of her former benefactor's property.
Afterwards she aspired to higher walks of the drama,
and played Bianca in Fazio, Madeline in The Belle of
Mt Faubourg, and many other parts in tragedy and
serious drama, with more or leas success. About this
time she married Mr. John Isaac Menken, and thus,
changing her second name Adios into the English
Adair, acquired the name she has borne till her death.
Before the American war broke out she again married,
this time Mr. Robert H. Newill, of the New York
Sunday Mercury, and author of the famous "Orpheus
C. Kerr Papers." This alliance, like one or two others
which it is still less pleasant to dwell upon, was ill-
assorted, and speedily resulted in separation and
divorce. At the commencement of the civil war she
evinced strong Southern sympathies, and on one occa-
sion when acting at Pittsburgh, she was arrested on a
charge of rebellious conduct, and actually imprisoned,
with some barbarity, for thirty days, when she was
sent under guard to Louisville. The offence was,
that seeing three men who looked like Southerners
in distress at the hotel in Pittsburgh, she sent some
bottles of wine to them accompanied by her
card, bearing in pencil these words, "To the health
of Jeff. Davis." After this affair she came to England
and played a wonderfully successful engagement at
Astley's • then to the provinces, and finally to the
Continent, where, except for a few months last winter,
she has lived ever since, making Paris her home. Had
she been spared life and health she would have played
at the Chatelet, in a new drama called Theod,orus,
written by M. Henri Rochefort, the clever journalist
and editor of La Lanterne. Throughout her life she
- . . .

°—
professed the Jewish creed, and only a few months ago
expressed a strong wish to be buried according to its
customs, with nothing to mark her resting place be-
yond a plain piece of wood with the words, "Thou
knowest."