Old Photo - Aunt Flo, The Burlesque Artist.

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Several people have been showing us their old photos, so here is one of my great aunt Flo. I never knew my grandfather's sister Flo, who according to my grandmother was 'no better than she should be'. As far as I know she based this opinion solely on the fact that Flo was 'on the stage'. Flo made her living in the Music Halls in the early 1900s, when they weren't considered to be very respectable places. They differed from the ordinary theatres of the day, in that they were designed so that mainly working class people could drink, eat and smoke in the auditorium, while at the same time watching the show. The entertainment was of the burlesque or vaudeville genre, consisting of comedy acts, singers, jugglers, impressionists, mime artists, pianists and male impersonators. Flo seems to have been one of the latter, judging from this old sepia photo of her in top hat and tails, complete with cane and cigarette.(This was probably what scandalised my grandmother.). Flo died in her early thirties, and Granny intimated that she died from some unmentionable disease, brought on by her questionable life style. Who knows? Flo seems to have been full of 'joie du vivre', someone I would have been delighted to know.