Silk and satin theatre programmes were frequently produced in the 18th and 19th centuries to commemorate special theatrical and musical events, the less expensive ones with integral fringing made from fraying cut edges, and the more expensive with separately applied silk or metallic fringes. This beautifully presented programme was produced for a Benefit Concert on 2nd November 1885, the last night of a series of promenade concerts at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden. The beneficiary was its lessee Mr. William Freeman Thomas. As usual for Benefit performances, he would have taken a percentage of the takings, and would have been have been involved in the choice of the evening's programme.

The concert included both light, operatic and classical music by the composers Giuseppe Verdi, Gioachino Rossini, Charles Gounoud, Edward Henry Thorne, Theo Marzials, Leo Délibes, Frederic Cowen, De Beriot, August Röckel, Lady Arthur Hill, Joseph Haydn, Arthur Gwyllym Crowe, Luigi Arditi, Arthur Sullivan, John Braham, Louis-Antoine Jullien, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Louis Diehl and Carl Latann. It was sung by Clara Samuell, Rose Hersee, Alwina Valleria, Joseph Maas, Signor Foli, Howard Reynolds, Madame Enriquez and Ada Patterson.

The bands and fifers of the Coldstream Guards and the Middlesex Yeomanry played under the supervision of their bandmasters C. Thomas and Mr. Graves. The rest of the music was conducted by Arthur Gwyllym Crowe (1825-1894), also a composer, especially of walzes, including Gwyllym Crowe's new vocal waltz Fairie Voices that opened the second half of this concert, sung by Mr. Stedman's choir of boys and girls, which The Musical Standard for 1885 noted, comprised sixty voices.