Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue

Actor and theatre manager; born 12 March 1830 in London. Employed as clerk until 1852 when success as amateur and encouragement from Charles Dickens led to professional stage debut; long career with popular following in farce and domestic melodrama, where his acting partners included Marie Bancroft, Lionel Brough and Henry Irving; married Susan Hale 1854 (died 1889); son born 1856 and daughter 1866 (died 1879 and 1888 respectively); toured North America 1874–5; became manager of Folly Theatre 1879, later renamed Toole’s; toured Australia and New Zealand 1890–91; deaths of children and wife succeeded by depression and retirement 1896; died 30 July 1906 in Brighton.

Toole had a naturally comic appearance, with a stout body on short legs and a large head with mobile features. In private life, he was ‘a devoted husband and father, a man of domestic habits and fond of his home’, [1] but also a staunch clubman, with a large store of humorous anecdotes.


Dr Jan Marsh

Referencesback to top

Anon 1912
Anon., ‘Brough, Lionel (1836–1909)’, DNB, London, 1912.

Ashton 1997
Ashton, G., Pictures in the Garrick Club, ed. K.A. Burnim and A. Wilton, London, 1997.

Bancroft 1925
Bancroft, S., Empty Chairs, London, 1925.

Bancroft & Bancroft 1909
Bancroft, S.B., and M.E. Bancroft, The Bancrofts: Recollections of Sixty Years, London, 1909.

Blomfield 2013
Blomfield, C., The Bancrofts on and off the Victorian Stage, Kew, 2013.

Burnim & Wilton 2001
Burnim, K.A., and A. Wilton, The Richard Bebb Collection in the Garrick Club: A Catalogue of Figures, Sculptures and Paintings, London, 2001.

Cuppleditch 1981
Cuppleditch, D., Phil May: The Artist and His Wit, London, 1981.

Downey & Downey 1890–94
Downey, W., and D. Downey, The Cabinet Portrait Gallery: Photographs by W. & D. Downey, 5 ser., London, 1890–94.

Fitzgerald 1904
Fitzgerald, P., The Garrick Club, London, 1904.

Fitzgerald 1910
Fitzgerald, S.J.A., Dickens and the Drama: Being an Account of Charles Dickens’s Connection with the Stage and the Stage’s Connection with Him, London, 1910.

Furniss [1915–16]
Furniss, H., The Garrick Gallery Caricatures, privately printed, London, n.d. [1915–16].

Hall 1997
Hall, N.J., Max Beerbohm Caricatures, New Haven and London, 1997.

Hart-Davis, 1972
Hart-Davis, R., A Catalogue of the Caricatures of Max Beerbohm, London, 1972.

Hatton 1889a
Hatton, J., Reminiscences of J.L. Toole, Related by Himself and Chronicled by Joseph Hatton, 2 vols, London, 1889.

Hatton 1889b
Hatton, J., Reminiscences of J.L. Toole, Related by Himself and Chronicled by Joseph Hatton, single-vol. ed., London, 1889.

Irving 1951
Irving, L., Henry Irving: The Actor and His World, London, 1951.

Knight 1986
Knight, V., comp., Works of Art of the Corporation of London: A Catalogue of Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture, Cambridge, 1986.

Mander & Mitchenson 1957
Mander, R., and J. Mitchenson, A Picture History of the British Theatre, London, 1957.

Read 2004
Read, M., ‘Toole, John Lawrence (1830–1906)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; online ed., January 2008.

Scott 1889
Scott, C., ‘Biographical Introduction’, in Morton, J.M., Plays for Home Performance, London, 1889.

Spencer-Longhurst 1993
Spencer-Longhurst, P., The Barber Institute of Fine Arts Handbook, Birmingham, 1993.

Spielmann 1901
Spielmann, M.H., British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-Day, London, 1901.

Thorpe 1932
Thorpe, J.H., Phil May: Master-Draughtsman & Humorist, 1864–1903, London, 1932.

Thorpe 1935
Thorpe, J., English Illustration: The Nineties, London, 1935.

Trewin 1980
Trewin, W., All on Stage: Charles Wyndham and the Alberys, London, 1980.

Waddy 1873
Waddy, F., Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Men of the Day, London, 1873.

Whyte 1898
Whyte, F., Actors of the Century: A Play-Lover’s Gleanings from Theatrical Annals, London, 1898.