SPINSTERS MEET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 206, 31 August 1936, Page 10

SPINSTERS MEET.

DEMAND FOR PENSIONS. The hundred and forty single women from Manchester who went to London Tecently to join in the demand of a Kingsway Hall meeting for spinsters' pensions at the age of fifty-five, and in an evening demonstration in Hyde Park, represented the 2600 members of the Manchester Spinsters' Pensions Association, and most of tliem are factory workers (says the "Manchester Guardian"). The first association was founded in Bradford last year by Miss Florence White, a business woman, who felt strongly that if widows received pensions at the average age of 55J, spinsters who contribute to the National Health Insurance ought to get it at the age of fifty-five. She pointed out that some of the widows had paid no contributions, and that many spinsters paid contributions for many years, yet received no pensions if for domestic or other Treasons they left work before they were sixtyfive and failed to keep up their insurance payments. She believes that many spinsters would bo glad to go out of industry ten years earlier if tliey had pensions of ten shillings a week. Manchester was the second town to join what has now become a national movement, with branches in many towns and a total (> oPembership of 35,000. A much larger number is wanted to support the legislative efforts that several members of Parliament are willing to promote. Lady Fisher Smith, of Halifax, is . president of the National Association, and Miss Isabel Forsyth, of Manchester, the chairman.