Janet Achurch

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Janet Achurch (17 January 1863 – 11 September 1916) was an English stage actress and actor-manager who helped popularize Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw in England. She is best known for playing Nora in the first English production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in 1889 and for taking the title role in Shaw’s Candida in 1897. She also ran the Novelty Theatre in London starting in 1889.

Born Janet Sharp in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, her mother died at childbirth, and she was raised by her father, with her maternal grandparents who ran Manchester’s Theatre Royal shaping her early exposure to theatre. She left school in 1881 to become an actress, joining Sarah Thorne’s stock company in Margate. Her first stage appearance was in 1883 at the Olympic Theatre in Betsy Baker. From 1883 to 1913 she performed widely in London, on tours across England, and in Australia, New Zealand, India, and Egypt.

She married actor Charles Charrington. In 1889, during a tour in Egypt, she gave birth to a stillborn child and nearly died, an event that contributed to later morphine addiction. Her last performance was in 1913 as Merete in Hans Wiers-Jenssen’s The Witch, after which she retired due to exhaustion. She died of morphine poisoning on 11 September 1916 on the Isle of Wight, aged 53.