Esmé England was 100 years old when she was interviewed, but she still had vivid memories of working as a seamstress at the Grand. During a performance of Carmen she saved the show, when the singer playing Don Jose almost destroyed the heroine’s costume!
"Carmen was a beautiful woman…. she had a most magnificent lace costume. As she walked, Don Jose … stood on her costume and she kept walking. All this lace came undone. I quickly got behind her where no-one could see me and put it together and at the end of the performance, I had to take it home and get it all back together again. I can see him now that lace and him standing in the middle of it. That was a catastrophe."
The other photographs and articles show Esme's work on costumes for the 1972 pantomime, Cinderella.