Charles Coghlan (actor, born 1842)

Charles Francis Coghlan (11 June 1842 – 27 November 1899) was an Irish actor and playwright once popular on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Charles F. Coghlan was born on 11 June 1842, in Paris, France to British subjects, Francis (sometimes spelled Frances) and Amie Marie (née Ruhly) Coghlan. His father, a native of Dublin, Ireland, was the founder of Coghlan's Continental Dispatch and publisher of Coghlan's Continental Guides, and counted among his friends, Charles Dickens, Charles Reade, and other literary figures of the day. Amie Coghlan was born on the English Channel Island of Jersey sometime around 1821. Charles Coghlan was later raised in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and Hull, Yorkshire and though originally groomed for a career in law he had chosen instead to be an actor whilst still in his teens.

Charles Coghlan began his stage career in 1859 as a minor player with the Sadler's Wells Theatre's summer tour. During their engagement in Dublin, Ireland Coghlan approached John Baldwin Buckstone, then manager of the Haymarket Theatre, with a play he had written. Buckstone passed on the play, but instead gave him the chance to play Monsieur Mafoi, a small role in The Pilgrim of Love, a play adapted by Lord Byron from Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, that opened at the Haymarket on 9 April 1860. Over the following few seasons Coghlan would play a number of supporting roles that steadily increased his stature as an actor. In 1868 he played Charles Surface in Sheridan's School for Scandal at the St James's Theatre, and later that year played Sir Oscar opposite Adelaide Neilson in Marston's Life for Life at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Coghlan would remain with Prince of Wales over the next seven or eight seasons, playing leading roles such as Geoffrey Delamayn in Collins' Man and Wife and Harry Speadbrow in Gilbert's Sweethearts. In 1876 Augustin Daly brought Coghlan to America where he would spend the greater balance of his career. He made his Broadway debut on 12 September 1876, at the Fifth Avenue Theater, as Alfred Evelyn in Lord Lytton's Money and was an instant success. Two months later, at the same venue, Coghlan played Orlando opposite Fanny Davenport's Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It. The next season Coghlan was engaged as the leading man at the Union Square Theater, where he played Jean Remind during the successful run of Augustus R. Cazauran's The Celebrated Case. He returned to London in 1881 to play Col. Woods, U. S. A. in the long running The Colonel, produced at the Prince of Wales. On 13 December 1890 Coughlan was declared bankrupt He had liabilities of £315. The pinnacle of Coghlan's near twenty five year career in America came on 2 December 1898, at the Fifth Avenue Theater in his own adaptation of the Dumas' play Kean titled The Royal Box, in which he played the part of the actor Clarence. This great success was tempered the following year by the failure of his play Citizen Pierre, in which he made his last New York performance. During his career Coghlan had played opposite his sister, Rose Coghlan, and in support of Lillie Langtry and Minnie Maddern Fiske. His last appearance on the stage was at Houston, Texas, on 28 October 1899, as Clarence in The Royal Box.

Actress Louisa Elizabeth Thorn, a native of London, England, was apparently Charles Coghlan's common law wife for twenty five years or more and the mother of his daughter Gertrude Coghlan. Rose Coghlan soon came to her brother's defense stating she had known for years that Louisa and Charles never legally married. Not long afterwards though, Rose decided to dissolve the business partnership she had with her brother. Upon learning of her father's marriage, an upset Gertrude Coghlan reportedly told the press, "I am Charles Coghlan's adopted daughter and not related to him in any way." Perhaps as an attempt to save his daughter the stigma of an illegitimate birth, Coghlan later supported Gertrude's claim that she was adopted, just not legally through the courts. Within a year of his marriage Coghlan would return to Louisa leaving Beveridge to seek an absolute divorce on the grounds of desertion. A few years later Gertrude joined her father's company playing Juliet in the Broadway production of the Royal Box and afterwards on the road. Gertrude Coghlan, who took to the stage at age sixteen, would go on to have a theatrical career spanning nearly forty years. The stage actor and director, Charles F. Coghlan (1896–1971), was often thought to be Coghlan's son, in fact he was his nephew, the son of the mezzo soprano singer Elizabeth "Eily" Coghlan. She died in April 1900 at the age of thirty six leaving Charles to be adopted by her sister, Rose Coghlan. Charles' father, according to his mother's New York Times obituary, was Sydney Battam or Bratton, a London banker. At the time of his wife's death, Battam was living in London with their twelve year old daughter, while four year old Charles was with his mother in America. At least one family researcher has made the claim that Charles F. Coghlan was the illegitimate son of Rose Coghlan and her one time lover the future King Edward VII of England. Unreliable source: date=January 2020

He was the namesake of a song by Dutch symphonic black/horror metal band Carach Angren, who have also a music video released to showcase his untimely demise and events thereafter.