The rural retreats of the aristocratic families of the 19th century provided a style of social entertaining that offered weekends of country pursuits, fashionable French cuisine, entertainment, fancy dress and private theatricals. The legendary link between the British aristocracy and the theatre is a long one that enjoyed the fun of drama at home and theatre in Town. Theatricals were organised and rehearsed by the host family involving their guests as actors and audience. Hunting and dining featured as vital ingredients of any ‘stay’ as did a tour of the gardens and theatricals on Saturday evenings. Neighbouring families would often ‘tour’ their theatrical favourites to each other’s houses.
In West Lancashire the ‘aristocratic repertory’ would move between Lathom House (the Bootle Wilbraham family), Tabley House (the Leicester family),

Arley Hall (the Warburton family) and Loton Park (the Leighton family).
Melodrama and one act comedies were not the only items to grace the private theatrical world of the local aristocracy. They also relished the art of Tableaux where famous scenes or moral dilemmas were staged as ‘still life’ scenes complete with costume and scenery.
Later plays were open to estate workers and local people who flocked to see their lords and masters perform the latest farces, melodramas, and comedies. A report in the local press on a production of School at Loton Park praises the efforts of the Sir Baldwyn Leighton as stage manager and actor as “...nulli secundus.” Miss (Adela) Wilbraham is noted for her appearance as Mrs. Sutcliffe.
The Bootle Wilbraham family scrapbook reveals numerous pictures of imagined, planned and staged productions full of moral and farcical tales of life’s traps, ironies and pitfalls and their often tragic or comic results. Theatrical pursuits became an essential part of the life of young aristocratic women. In dramas ideas, emotions and imaginings could be allowed full reign in a world where their thoughts and desires were given little consideration.

The author of the drawings, paintings, and writings contained in the family scrapbook would not have realised what an important window into the world of privileged young women from the Vicorian era, such books would prove to provide. The painting shown below is one of three dealing with the imagined moral decline of a young woman through drink and loose living.