Jean Aylwin

[3] She began her professional stage career in 1904 with a touring company playing character roles in smaller towns in the British provinces in such melodramas as The Red Coat and No Cross, No Crown.

She later toured with a company managed by George Dance as a shop assistant in the Edwardian musical comedy The Girl from Kays, and next was engaged at the Gaiety Theatre, in the chorus.

She soon became an understudy there[4] and made her London principal debut in the same theatre, as Sylvana in the long-running musical comedy The Spring Chicken in 1906.

A reviewer commented: "Jean Aylwin, who was altogether charming as Gobette, had no difficulty in showing what an accomplished actress this most outrageous of flirts was.

"[8] The show's success was later described by another critic as "in no small degree due to the brilliant acting of Miss Jean Aylwin".

[11] The Dundee Courier praised the story of a girl from a rigidly righteous (unco guid) family, who runs away to the music hall stage and then returns,[10] but the Manchester Courier's review lamented that the show's own music hall format gave limited scope to 'clever players' from the 'legitimate' theatre, such as Aylwin.

[17][18] In February 1916, All Scotch was revived at Her Majesty's Theatre, Dundee, where Aylwin's part was again praised as "charming" by the press.

In the same year, she starred in a sketch called Something to his Advantage, written for her by Dion Titheradge, at the Euston Theatre[20] and the Coventry Hippodrome.

She stated that she intended to travel to India and other parts of the East, to work with the Wesleyan Missionary Society to improve conditions in leper settlements.