Around 1900, a man, rumored in England to be Jack the Ripper, bought property in New London. The actor, Richard Mansfield, wasn’t that notorious murderer, but it’s a tribute to his ability to play villains that some people thought he might be.

Richard was born in Berlin in 1857 and spent his childhood on an island in the North Sea. His father was an English wine merchant, and his mother was a Russian-born opera singer. He was educated in England and achieved celebrity as an actor and theater manager in London and New York.

He’s probably best known for his performances in Shakespearean dramas and Gilbert & Sullivan light operas, but he also appeared in works by other playwrights, including George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen. But it was his role as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde that, in a way, made him most famous because it scared people to death.

The production of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” debuted in Manhattan in 1887, just a year after Robert Louis Stevenson had written the novella. The following year, Richard took the play to London, where it created a sensation. The material was fresh and new, and Richard was masterful as the lead. This was the time when Jack the Ripper, a serial killer, was terrorizing London by preying on young women. Some theater-goers felt that no actor could be that convincing as a villain unless he was actually evil himself. At least one person reported his suspicions to Scotland Yard. In an effort to restore his reputation as a good guy, Richard gave away free tickets to a different play.

Richard fits into the history of New London because he, like many wealthy and socially prominent people, chose this area as an ideal spot for summer vacations. At first, Richard leased a cottage at Eastern Point in Groton and enjoyed bobbing around the Sound in a rented yacht. The next season, he rented a cottage in New London’s Pequot Colony, one of the most upscale resorts in the state.

Pequot Colony was located south of downtown, bounded roughly by Montauk and Glenwood avenues and by the Thames River. It took shape in 1853 when the exclusive Pequot House hotel was built. The advent of rail service brought people from as far away as Washington D.C. and New York. Presidents U.S. Grant and Chester A. Arthur, as well as a Supreme Court justice, were among the many celebrity guests there. Many visitors returned so often that they decided to build permanent summer homes here.

To spare Sunday worshippers inconvenient buggy drives to downtown churches, Pequot Chapel was built in 1870 on Montauk Avenue, just a short walk from the Pequot House. A fire that destroyed the hotel, Prohibition and the Great Depression all led to the colony’s eventual demise as a resort community. But many buildings from that period still stand in what is now an official National Historic District. The lovely chapel, graced with Tiffany stained glass windows, continues to hold non-sectarian services from June through September.

Richard was among those who wanted more permanent roots by the shore. He bought property on Ocean Avenue, where he lived in a house called The Grange. It was there that he died of cancer in 1907 at age 50. The rector of St. James Episcopal Church conducted the funeral at The Grange, after which Richard’s body was carried across the street to be interred in Gardner Cemetery. Mansfield Road is nearby, so I assume it was named for him.

The New York Times eulogized Richard as “the greatest actor of his hour, and one of the greatest of all times.” A piece by the Pequot Casino Association, published in The Day, noted that his death was a ”loss to the world at large and an irreparable sorrow to the community.”

I found an anecdote about Richard’s early years that makes him seem very human. When he was trying to break into the theater but hadn’t succeeded yet, he earned a living by playing the piano at various venues. As the story goes, on one occasion when a large audience provided a golden opportunity to be noticed, Richard was so overcome with anxiety that he actually fainted at the piano. From incapacitating stage fright to a commanding stage presence that could frighten others: what a career trajectory!

Many thanks to the New London Public Library, and to a kind reader, Susan Rees Jones, who suggested this topic and shared her research with me.