AMUSING PENSION CLAIMS.

Auckland Star, 2 September 1933, Page 8 (Supplement)

AMUSING PENSION CLAIMS.

During its administration of the British Pensions Acts, the Ministry of Health has received many curious, often amusing, applications. A woman applicant who, finding that she was not enentitled to a widow's pension, claimed an orphan's pension in the alternative, on the ground that she had been an orphan for 45 years! -A male applicant was asked to produce a certificate of baptism to establish his age. He replied that he had never been baptised, but was prepared to submit to tho rite at once if it would help him to secure a pension. Another applicant, asked to state his sex, replied that he was a Congregationalist; while a woman who had been replaced in her occupation by a man stated that she had lost her employment through "change of sex."" A male applicant wrote that he had been "decapitated" for a number of years, obviously meaning that he had been incapacitated. Another applicant modified an original claim to a pension by stating that he desired only to obtain a new pair of spectacles.