During the second season, which lasted for six months, they had repeated the same plays many times, and probably having nothing new or more attractive to offer for another season, they determined to try their fortunes elsewhere. They closed with a series of benefits, and some of the appeals made respecting them are sufficiently curious to be noticed. Mrs. Davis announces that a benefit is given to her to enable her to buy off her time, and she hopes that all ladies and gentlemen who are charitably inclined will favor it, closing in legal phraseology, “and their humble petitioner, as in duty bound, will ever pray.” It was the constant practice at that time for masters of vessels to bring out passengers to New York upon the condition that they should be sold immediately upon their arrival as servants to any person who would pay their passage-money. They were sold for a definite period of time and were called Redemptioners, of which class Mrs. Davis, from her earnest appeal, appears to have been one. Mr. Jago humbly begs that all gentlemen and ladies will be so kind as to favor him with their company, as he never had a benefit before, and is just come out of prison; and Mrs. Osborne appropriately selects the play of “The Distressed Mother,” with the announcement that it is the first time this poor widow has had a benefit, and having met with divers late hardships and misfortunes she appeals to the benevolent and others.
It is stated in Clapp’s “Records” that Otway’s “Orphan” was played in Boston, in the Coffee House in State street, in the early part of 1750, by two young Englishmen, assisted by some volunteer comrades of the town; and as this is about the period when Murray & Kean’s company began to perform in New York, this may possibly have been an initiatory attempt on the part of some of the members of that company to introduce dramatic amusements among the people of New England. Whether it was so or not, it was immediately followed by the passage of an act by the General Court of Massachusetts, in March, 1750, prohibiting stage plays and theatrical entertainments of any kind.