AustLit

The daughter of actor/manager Richard Stewart Towzey and his actress/comedian wife, Theodosia, Nellie Stewart and her sisters Docy, Maggie and Aggie all began acting as small children. As a young woman, Nellie built a career playing in operetta and Gilbert and Sullivan operas and in the 1880s began a long relationship with the theatrical manager, George Musgrove.

After starring for Musgrove in Paul Jones in 1889, Stewart went with him to England where their daughter Nancye was born in 1893. She returned to Australia later that same year to head a comic opera company which toured Australasia until 1895, after which time she returned to London. Over the next decade and a half Stewart alternated tours between Great Britain, Australia and America. While in Australia in 1911 she also appeared in one of the country's earliest films, Raymond Longford's Sweet Nell of Old Drury.' Following its premiere at the Sydney Lyceum on 2 December, the film screened around the country for at least six years.

Stewart continued to perform in both comedy and drama, and worked in theatre management up until the b1920s, and also many appearances for charities. When nearly 70 she played in an astonishing revival of her lithe, graceful Sweet Nell. Survived by her daughter, she died in Sydney on 21 June 1931 and was cremated.

(Source: Ross Cooper. 'Stewart, Eleanor Towzey (Nellie) (1858–1931)', Australian Dictionary of Biography)