George Pitt was born on 30 March 1795 in
Lancashire to musician George Cecil Pitt and his wife, actress Sophia Pyne. George Cecil Pitt (baptised 1767 – 1820) was an illegitimate son of the actress
Harriet Pitt and George Anderson. Harriet Pitt later had other children, with the musician and dramatist
Charles Dibdin. As a young man, George Pitt took Dibdin as his middle name in honour of his uncles
Charles Dibdin the younger and
Thomas John Dibdin, who helped him find theatrical work. He married Sarah Rosalind Humber on 28 April 1814. In 1840 his play
Rookwood at the
City of London Theatre, adapted from the novel
Rookwood by
William Harrison Ainsworth, From 1841, he had a long-running success at the
Royal Victoria Theatre with
Susan Hopley; or, The Vicissitudes of a Servant Girl, adapted from the novel
Adventures of Susan Hopley; or, Circumstantial Evidence by
Catherine Crowe. By 1849, it had been performed 343 times. In 1843 he became
actor-manager of the
Britannia Theatre, where he produced more sensational melodramas such as
Pauline the Pirate in 1845 and
Margaret Maddison, the Female Felon in 1846. The
Lord Chamberlain's Office refused to license some of his particularly lurid plays. Audiences were fascinated by the villain's complete lack of remorse, as well as by the stage device of the
barber chair which inverted to eject its occupant, and the play became another long-running success. He died on 16 February 1855 in
Hoxton, London, in reduced circumstances after a long period of ill-health. He was survived by a daughter and three sons, ==Notes==