[2][3] In 1896, Aylwen began work as a clerk at stockbrokers J & A Scrimgeour,[4] eventually rising to senior partner by 1948, the year he became Lord Mayor.

[10] Less than a week later, he was the second person to be officially notified of the birth of Charles, Prince of Wales on 14 November, after the Home Secretary, James Chuter Ede, who had to be officially notified himself as the centuries-old tradition that the Home Secretary be present in person for a royal birth was abolished.

The toast and Kaye's response, beginning "I think emotions are the same the world over", were covered in the papers in both the UK and the US, a fact ridiculed by Life magazine.

[12][13] At the Lord Mayor's Show on 9 November 1949, when he was being taken to the swearing-in of his successor, Sir Frederick Rowland, the two horses leading his coach bolted into the crowd, hospitalizing around a dozen people.

He divorced his first wife, Edith Eliza Caroline Hill, in 1951 and married playwright Ingraa Elena D'etter Bulgarides.