The Lost Child - 1873

=====From the Acton Davies book on Maude Adams=====

It was the fashion in those days to end the night's performance with a roaring farce. On the night of her impromptu debut the manager had announced a comic piece in two scenes called The Lost Child. Mrs. Adams was cast for one of the leading roles in it. The first scene had passed off very successfully, and the baby - a salaried member of the company who played all the roles, both masculine and feminine, which were under a year old-had scored quite a hit. But no sooner was the infant removed from the stage than it set up a most unearthly yell. It was one of those weird consecutive wails which, to a mother's ear, mean either a pin or a wakeful night. After investigation had proven that a pin had nothing to do with it, the mother, turning to the stage manager in sheer despair, exclaimed "The play is done for. When she once gets started crying like that she never thinks of stopping under two hours."

" But, good Heavens! We'll have to gag her. The play must go on somehow," cried the stage manager." the audience knows what's coming. They've seen the play before, and if we don't bring that youngster in on a platter, why, they'll pull down the house." "why not try Maudie ? " said Mrs. Adams,, coming to the rescue. "She's down in my dressing-room, and as I am on the stage with her I 'm sure she'll good."

"And she was good -so good, in fact that her rival that very night received her two weeks' notice, and for the remainder of that season all the infant roes were played by little Miss Kiscadden.

"The principal cause of the hit which Miss Maudie made with the audience that night was the fact that the original baby who had appeared in the first scene was only six weeks old, while Maude, with her additional seven and a half months' growth, on her appearance disclosed the startling phenomenon that the youngster had increased a good twenty pounds in weight inside of fifteen minutes."

=====American Theatre Companies, 1749-1887 Book by Weldon B. Durham; Greenwood Press, 1986=====

Several of the company members continued acting careers at other western theatres, but none achieved prominence. The only performer to do so made only one appearance on the Salt Lake Theatre stage. The infant daughter of the company's comic ingenue, Annie Adams, was carried on in 1873 as a babe-in-arms in the farce The Lost Child. That infant, Maude Adams, went on to become a great star, although she can hardly be claimed as a product of the Salt Lake company.

=====Utah, a Guide to the State Book by Utah Writers' Program (Utah); Hastings House, 1941=====

The actress Maude Adams belongs more completely to Utah. Her mother, Annie Adams Kiskadden, was a popular leading lady in the 1870's at the Salt Lake Theater, and Maude was sometimes permitted to sleep backstage in an old, wide-board rocking cradle, while her mother played. During an entr'acte of The Lost Child , the baby normally used in the play became ill, or fell into a fit of crying (raconteurs of the incident are not in harmony on this point), and Maude, aged seven months, played her first role as substitute for an infant supernumerary. She returned about six years later with her mother in The Stepmother , Little Susie , and A Woman of the People , scored her first solo success at the age of nine with an intermission song, "The Yaller Girl Who Winked at Me," and played the Salt Lake Theater as a leading lady in her own right at the age of twenty. Thereafter she went on to acquire an international reputation. Her old cradle is carefully preserved in the Capitol Museum, together with posters advertising Peter Pan, the role which some say will be remembered longer than the old Salt Lake Theater.


The Sandusky Register Nov. 11, 1915

Nevada State Journal Feb. 23, 1923

Finding anything from the actual times about this play is extremely difficult; these three articles are all written as historical pieces rather than contemporary pieces.