I couldn’t find out very much about this beautiful girl, except that her name is Pearl Aufrere, a chorus girl and actress in the early 1910s in London. She seems to have made the news more for her illustrious engagements rather than her stage appearances. She was engaged to Viscount Dangan, an engagement which was broken off, and went on to marry the Early of Crowley according to this article.
She was a famous beauty of the time and was featured on cigarette cards as well as a series of rather risqué photos of her in the bath which are now at the National Portrait Gallery.
All of these photos were taken by the same photographer: “Bassano Ltd, Royal Photographers’ who had a large photographic studio in Old Bond Street in London.
Above: Pearl photographed some time between 1910 and 1915, in what would have been a very daring outfit for the time, even on the beach! Although if you look closely it actually looks like that was a backdrop in the photographers studio rather than a real beach.
Image source and copyright: 1, 2, 3, No known copyright restrictions
I love seeing photos like this. There’s a woman on instagram @jkeith308, who posts the most amazing photos of Ziegfield Follies girls and other women from the early part of the 20th century. It was a fascinating time, and the fact that we don’t know much about these women, in an age when it feels like you can know everything about everyone, just makes them more interesting.
I love these photos too, I’m glad I’m not the only one. I’ll check out @jkeith308, thanks for the tip 🙂
Pearl Aufrere was born in 1894 and died in 1940. She eventually married Gordon Tabernacle and had one son who became a priest.