Esther is the widow of Edgar Rothschild and the mother of Rabbis Walter and Sylvia Rothschild and their sister Joyce. She was a playwright in her younger days, having had her works performed in on the stage in London.

Her plays include Our Tale Of Two Cities & Rosies Shop.

Here Esther  who was born into the Bergson tailoring family looks back on her memories of the Bradford Club and her time as a writer of plays…

“We used to have big Chanukah parties there and somewhere I have a photograph of me there in 1933. Wonderful parties with a concert at the end in which we were all encouraged to take part. The star of the show was always a boy called Stanley Brown who later became a dentist.

My involvement began in 1946 when the extinct dramatic society was revived. The person who can give you more detailed information is Sydney Levine, who now lives in Hove. Sydneys. Brother in law Len Solity was very involved with the running if the club and though he died some years ago he had a son from his first marriage.

We were repeatedly told how good the earlier one had been, but we also made our mark. Our first production was a trio of one act plays and I won the silver cup for my role as an elderly lady in a play called “Where Every Prospect Pleases” by Philip Johnson.

Over the years we did many plays and my sister and I wrote some of them. One was called “Treasurers Report” and I cannot remember the plot but I played opposite Sydney in it. Our main achievement was one we wrote for a festival based on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The festival was organised by Maccabi and we took it to Manchester where we won the first round. Then great excitement; we all went by train to London and put it on for one night in the West End. I think it was the Phoenix Theatre. Our producer had been professional pre-war and one of the cast had been an elocution teacher so with wonderful lighting, miming, choral speaking and some excellent actors of whom Teddy Nathanson and his wife Doris were outstanding. We did well. We rehearsed in the afternoon and the show in the evening and John Slater a well known Jewish actor adjudicated and though we did not win we received an excellent criticism. There were just two societies taking part. Another of our plays which went to London was called “Rosies Shop” and based on our memories of shopping with our mother in Leeds in a delicatessen shop on North Street. Soon after my sister went to live in London and took the script and it was performed at many amateur dramatic societies raising money for Jewish charities.

Please do not ask me where all those scripts are now, long lost. But we had a lot of fun and from all that grew a debating society, a rambling society and Sunday evening dances. I dropped out after I was married but it continued.

The festival play was called “Our Tale Of Two Cities”.

I hope all this will be helpful. My sister was very involved and was chairman for many years but is now 92 and with poor memory.

When I look at that early photo, we had a large number of young people. Joe Bergson, Dianas late father was involved in those social activities. I believe there was a tennis club pre-war.”

They (the buildings) were all a little different in those days, one became the Mornington Nursing Home where I had my three children and I am not sure if that was number 8, that was way back in the fifties. The club had a bar and sold refreshments and there was also a billiard and snooker room. Because this was the aftermath of the war there were still many people living in Bradford from other cities, so there was a brief period when there quite a lot of new faces. Maurice Levi was also active and he has two sons, Brian and Michael. I think they live in Leeds. Sydney lived on Apsley crescent very near the club and his father was the Chazan Schochet so he knew more about the Bradford community of those days, but don’t leave it too long as Sydney will soon be ninety.