Place Name
One of a cluster of streets named after famous playwrights and poets, others include Shakespeare Crescent, Ruskin Avenue, Byron Avenue, Shelley Avenue and Coleridge Avenue. This one is named after Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (October 30, 1751 – July 7, 1816) author of The Rivals, The School for Scandal, The Duenna and A Trip to Scarborough. There is however a local connection as Sheridan held a house in the Wanstead for a time. It was here that he cared for his wife’s daughter, fathered by her lover, Lord Edward FitzGerald. When Elizabeth Sheridan died Sheridan fulfilled his promise to look after Elizabeth and FitzGerald’s baby daughter, called Mary. A nurse was employed to care for the child but the baby had a series of fits one evening in October 1793, when she was 18 months old, and passed away before a doctor could attend.
