Helen Barry (born Elizabeth Short, 5 January 1840 – 20 July 1904) was an English actress. She began her acting career at age 32 after her first marriage dissolved. She performed leading roles in West End theatres in the 1870s in comedy, drama and Victorian burlesque and remarried in 1877 to Alexander Rolls, the former Mayor of Monmouth, briefly moving to Wales. But she was acting in London again by 1880, and her husband died in 1882. Barry soon remarried and moved to America, where she was again widowed within a year. She continued her stage career, both in New York and London, for more than a decade thereafter. Childhood and first marriage Barry was born as Elizabeth Short in Lee, now a suburb of London but then a village in the county of Kent; she was the daughter of Charles Henry Short and his wife Mary. Elizabeth married Joseph Brandon, a Belgian, on 3 May 1855 when she was fifteen years old. The ceremony took place at the Parish Church of Saint Luke, Charlton, Kent. Her daughter, Esther E. Brandon, was born in Greenwich, Kent in the second quarter of 1855, around the time of the marriage. On 2 June 1870, the marriage was dissolved at Westminster, upon the petition of Joseph Brandon. Esther had been put out as an apprentice by 1871. The divorce was finalised on 29 February 1876. Early theatrical career Barry first appeared on stage as Princess Fortinbrasse in Dion Boucicault and James Planché's Babil and Bijou at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1872. She also appeared there in This Evening at Seven. She was then at the Royal Court Theatre until 1873. In March of that year she created the role of Selene, the fairy queen, in The Happy Land, a successful Victorian burlesque by W. S. Gilbert and Gilbert Arthur à Beckett. Later that year, she took the role of Margaret Hayes in Tom Taylor's play, Arkwright's Wife, at the Theatre Royal in Leeds. When the piece moved to the Globe Theatre in London, Barry moved with it. The Times wrote that she "has all the force required by the arduous character of Margaret, and she expresses the tenderer emotions with good effect". Barry next took on the role of Edith Dombey in a play called Heart's Delight, adapted from Dombey and Son. She played at the Gaiety Theatre, London, as Armande