Mr and Mrs Case

George Case (life dates unknown) and his wife Grace Egerton (d. 1881), variety performers, made several successful tours of Australia in the 1860s and 1870s. Mrs Case, the star of the duo, immediately impressed audiences with her impersonations, singing, dancing, dextrous changes of costume and prestidigitation in the persona of ‘The Wizard of the East’. In December 1864 they played before Governor and Lady Darling, and every seated lady received a carte de visite of Mrs Case by Alexander Fox. Mr Case filled the gaps in her performances with turns on the violin and accordion. In August 1865, in Brisbane, she appeared in fifteen different roles on one night. In 1867 she appeared as the tenor, Sims Reeves, in Hobart; in January 1868 she took on three separate characters in ‘A Scene in a London Restaurant’.  In Harrogate, Yorkshire in 1870 she starred as Mrs Major Buster, formidable mother-in-law, and Miss Judith Clench, ‘the determined advocate of woman’s rights’. Mr and Mrs Case were still drawing favourable reviews in 1879 in Canada, where Mrs Case died in 1881.