Famous People with Name Matilda

Matilda Alice Powles            Origin/Culture/Country: English

Matilda Alice Powles: was an English male impersonator. At the age of 11, she adopted the stage name Vesta Tilley becoming the most famous and well paid music hall male impersonator of her day. She was a star in both Britain and the United States for over thirty years.Her father was a comedy actor and sometimes theatre manager, and Tilley first appeared on stage at the age of three and a half. At the age of six she did her first role in male clothing under the name Pocket Sims Reeves, a parody of then-famous opera singer Sims Reeves. She would come to prefer doing male roles exclusively, saying that "I felt that I could express myself better if I were dressed as a boy". At the age of eleven she debuted in London at the Canterbury Hall the name Vesta Tilley. "Vesta" referred to a brand of safety matches, and "Tilley" is a nickname for Matilda.

Matilda Ann Aston            Origin/Culture/Country: Australian

Matilda Ann Aston: was a blind Australian writer and teacher, who founded the Victorian Association of Braille Writers, and later went on to establish the Association for the Advancement of the Blind, with herself as secretary. She is remembered for her achievements in promoting the rights of vision impaired people.With the assistance of friends and the Australian Natives Association, Aston established the Victorian Association of Braille Writers in 1894. This organisation would eventually become the Victorian Braille Library. In 1895 a meeting called by Tilly Aston founded the Association for the Advancement of the Blind (now Vision Australia) to fight for greater independence, social change and new laws for blind people. They quickly won voting rights for blind people; free postage for Braille material in 1899 (a world first for Australia); and transport concessions for the blind

Matilda Jane Evans            Origin/Culture/Country: Australian

Matilda Jane Evans: was as Australian novelist, who wrote under the pseudonym Maud Jean Franc.Matilda was the elder daughter of Dr Henry Congreve and his wife Elizabeth Ann, née Jacob. The family moved to South Australia in 1852, started a school at Mount Barker and on 16 February 1860 married the Rev. Ephraim Evans, a Baptist minister, who died 6 April 1863. In 1860 Mrs Evans opened a school at Angaston which was still in existence in 1868. She wrote her first story, Marian; or the light of Some One's Home while she was at Mount Barker and it appears to have been immediately successful. The British Museum catalogue records an edition published at Bath in 1860, a second edition was published by John Darton and Company in 1861, and another edition published by Sampson Low appeared in the same year.

Matilda Chaplin Ayrton            Origin/Culture/Country: French

Matilda Chaplin Ayrton: was a British physician. She studied medicine in London, Edinburgh and Paris, pursuing higher studies at the latter's universities. She travelled to Japan, where she opened a school for midwives, and was an author of anthropological studies on its peoples.