Crouch, Anna Maria

1763

1805

This actress and singer was born in Gray’s Inn Lane, London, on 20 April, 1763. She was one of six children of Peregrine Phillips, an official of the Wine Licence Office, who may have been connected through his French mother to Charlotte Corday, the assassin of Marat. Ann Maria was apprenticed for three years to Thomas Linley, the music master and joint patentee of Drury Lane Theatre, and made her first professional appearance on 11 November 1780 at Drury Lane as Mandane in Arne’s “Artaxerxes”. She became a popular performer in London and Ireland. In January 1785 she married a young lieutenant named Rawlings Crouch. She had a series of amours, notably one with the singer Michael Kelly and one with the Prince of Wales. By 1790 her talents were diminishing and her health worsening. She died at Brighton on 20 October 1805, evidently of cancer. Mrs Crouch at her peak, however, had extraordinary beauty, grace and singing talent. In addition to those portraits of her at the Garrick Club, she was painted by a number of artists, including Romney, whose pictures of her are at Kenwood and the Pennsylvania Museum. (BDA)