PRINCESS’S TOUR OF WEST INDIES

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27576, 5 February 1955, Page 7

PRINCESS’S TOUR OF WEST INDIES

Rally By Children Of Trinidad

(Rec. 10.45 p.m.) PORT OF SPAIN (TRINIDAD), Feb. 3. Thirty thousand Trinidad school children today danced, sang, paraded, cheered and waved the Union Jack for Princess Margaret. The boys and girls jammed the grandstands and the rain-soaked cricket field at the Queen’s Park Oval at a children’s rally in honour of the Princess. The Princess’s luck in the weather turned sour as she concluded an hourlong State drive through the city’s colourful streets and attended a Town Hall reception in the morning. The rain poured during the children’s rally. The slim Princess, dressed in pink silk, rode around the oval in an open jeep-type vehicle while the children cheered and waved lustily. Princess Margaret waved her white-gloved hand back at them and smiled. She then took her seat in the grandstand and received flowers and gifts from Trinidad orphanages. She watched a marching review of other children, heard a massed children’s choir, and watched secondary schoolboys perform gymnastics. Primary schoolboys in straw hats, coloured jerseys and white trousers did the Bongo, a dance found chiefly in villages by the seaside, and 100 girls in brilliant costumes and head-ties did the Bel Air, a dance with mincing steps. The Princess chatted informally to people of all races during her visit to the Town Hall, where she sat on a red dais sipping champagne along with 1000 guests. There was a roar of cheers when she told them: “My only regret is that I am not going to be with you longer.” The Princess leaves on February 5 for Tobago. The Princess attended a State banquet tonight. She wore a completely new hair style, resembling Empress Josephine’s.

It was similar to that worn in the Court of Napoleon in the early nineteenth century, it was arranged for the Princess by her personal hairdresser from London, who is travelling in her party.