Clowns with Prop Donkey

Laura Knight began to tour with Carmo's Circus during the early 1930s around towns in the midlands. She was taken on as their official artist and paid a salary of two and sixpence a week. She spent her spare time with the clown, Joe Bert and his wife Ally, with whom she shared lodgings, and later in 1962 she wrote 'A Proper Circus Omie, based on the couple's fascinating life, which she illustrated with her circus drawings.
(see C. Fox, Dame Laura Knight, Oxford, 1988, p.68).