Bob Acres is a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals.

Acres was a coward, whose "courage always oozed out at his finger ends". He was popularly played in the 19th century by American actor Joseph Jefferson. (Jefferson named a Louisiana train station after this character; see Bob Acres, Louisiana.)^[1]

Winston Churchill quotes General Brabazon as emitting the name of this character when informed his force was not to attack the Boers at Dewetsdorp during the 1899 campaign.^[2]

1. ^ Benjamin McArthur, The Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle: Joseph Jefferson and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 274.
2. ^ Winston Churchill, ‘My Early Life’ (London: Eland Publishing Limited, 2000), p. 307.

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