DEBUTANTES AT PALACE

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28436, 16 November 1957, Page 4

DEBUTANTES AT PALACE

Parties To Stop Next Year

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON. Nov. 14. ' The Queen today ordered the ending of the exclusive Palace 'presentation parties at which a 'small number of society debutantes are presented to her. i The Royal decision was ‘announced from the Lord : Chamberlain’s Office.

It said that the presentation parties at Buckingham Palace and at Holyrood, Edinburgh, would be discontinued after next year.

The announcement said that the Queen proposed to hold additional garden parties so that larger numbers of people might be invited to Buckingham Palace—including many from the Commonwealth—to meet her and the Duke of Edinburgh.

In recent years, there have been two afternoon presentation parties at Buckingham Palace and one at Holyrood House each summer. About 250 girls have made their curtsey to the Queen and the Duke at each presentation. Garden parties are attended by both men and women and the number of guests frequently totals as many as 8000 or 9000.

Court circles said that the Queen had been considering the pattern of official entertainment since 1954.

The Queen had been reluctant to bring the presentation parties to an end. Court circles said.: because it was obvious from the many application that they gave pleasure to a large number of young people. More Applicants In fact, the number of applications for presentation had risen to the extent where it would have become necessary to hold an additional presentation. The Queen’s decision appeared to some observers to be a further answer to critics who have demanded recently that the Court should be more “modern and democratic.” The custom of presenting a small number of society debutants has been attacked in many quarters as snobbish and outmoded.

To for choice as a debutante a girl has had to have two women sponsors who had previously been presented at Court. This has restricted the number of girls honoured and has also Jed jto some society women accepting I fees to sponsor debutantes.

A business has developed over the years of “schools for debutantes” in which society women rehearse the girls in deportment and drill them in the curtseys they have to drop 1o the Queen.

The practice of presenting young girls to the monarch has developed since the sixteenth century.

The first Queen Elizabeth allowed the public access to the long galleries at Greenwich Palace while she walked to church. She used to stop and talk to some of the crowd, and young people of leading families were presented to her.

Then, in the time of Queen Anne, there were references to •Drawing Rooms’’ which took the form of an assembly of people, mostly women.