Pitt, Ann

1720?

1799

Ann Pitt’s parentage is unknown, but her brother Cecil Pitt was a wealthy dry goods merchant in London. She was acting on the London stage by 12 January 1745, when she played Angelica in "The Anatomist" at Drury Lane. Except for some appearances in the provinces and at the Haymarket in summers, Ann Pitt spent some 47 years engaged at Drury Lane, playing a line of serving maids, nurses, old women and eccentrics. Among her regular roles were Lappet in "The Miser", the Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet" and Lady Bountiful in "The Beaux’ Stratagem". The last role she seems to have played on any stage was the Spanish Lady in "Barataria" in June 1792, and that appearance was at Covent Garden, not Drury Lane. She died in London on 18 December 1799 and was buried in the family plot of Charles Dibdin the Younger in the cemetery at St James’s Chapel, Pentonville. Ann Pitt’s daughter Harriett Pitt (1748?-1814) had been the mistress of the actor-manager Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) and the mother of Charles Isaac Mungo Dibdin (1768-1833). Our subject Ann Pitt’s other child, Mary Ann Richards, was sired by the scene painter John Inigo Richards (d. 1810). In addition to the portrait now in the Garrick Club (G0672), Ann Pitt is shown as Lady Wishfort in "The Way of the World" in an engraving by Walker, after Dodd, 1776. She also is seen as one of the Witches in the painting by Romney(?) of a scene in "Macbeth", in the Garrick Club, 297 (BDA)