Mamie Gilroy

Mamie Gilroy (c. 1871 – August 8, 1904) was an American actress and singer who worked in musical theatre and appeared on Broadway between 1897 and 1903. Born in New York City, she was the niece of Thomas F. Gilroy, who served as mayor of New York in 1893 and 1894. She is sometimes confused in historical sources with her cousin Mary Agnes Gilroy Mulqueen (1865–1938), the mayor's daughter.

Gilroy's performing career began when she was a small child, working in stock companies connected with producers Charles H. Hoyt and Charles Frohman. Her early stage appearances included Only a Farmer's Daughter (1885), The Fakir (1890), Romany Rye (1891), Tuxedo (1891–1892), Babes in the Woods (1893), A Milk White Flag (1894), Davy Jones (1894), The China Dog (1895), Little Miss Busybody (1895), The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown (1896), and The Merry-Go-Round (1896). Her Broadway career began with Miss Manhattan in 1897, a credit also verified in theatrical records.

Subsequent Broadway engagements included Trilby (1898), The Girl from Paris (which she performed in both 1898 and 1902), Mam'selle 'Awkins (1900), Star and Garter (1900), El Capitan (1901), the burlesque The Giddy Throng (1901), Lady Bountiful (1902), The Dress Parade, and George W. Lederer's Mid-Summer Night Fancies (1903). In the musical farce After Office Hours (1901), she performed the song "Everybody Wants to Kiss the Baby."

Beyond her stage work, Gilroy appeared in print advertisements for Dr. Greene's Nervura, a blood and nerve remedy marketed to women, with her face, name, and words used in the campaign in 1901. In 1902 she became an honorary member of the Theatrical Mechanics' Association. In 1898 she proposed the founding of a church specifically for theatre professionals. That same year, an announcement of her engagement to Francis W. McNamara, a public health doctor in Chicago, appeared publicly; McNamara, who was already married, characterized the announcement as a joke.

Gilroy's personal life included two notable accidents: in 1888 she was struck by a horse-drawn ambulance on a New York street, at which time she was reported to be 17 years old, and in 1894 she was thrown from an electric trolley in Boston. She died of heart disease on August 8, 1904, at her home at 130 East 115th Street in New York City, at approximately 33 years of age, though obituaries listed her age as 26. A cocktail composed of whiskey, ginger ale, and lime was named in her honor.