FORTY YEARS AFTER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20316, 26 January 1928, Page 15

FORTY YEARS AFTER.

SEVEN WOMEN’S PACT. Mid-day on Midsummer’s Day, 1931, may see the fulfilment of a strange 40-year-old reunion pact at Westminster Abbey. The pact to meet again was made at noon on Midsummer a Day, 1891, between seven girls working as art assistants in a large London pottery factory. ‘ I am one of the five survivors of the pact,” said Mrs M. reading, of Norbury, recently, “ and the other four live in Brondesbury, West Kensington, West Ealing, and Chiswick. , „ . “ The pact came about in this way. It was a sweltering June day, and we were not feeling or looking exactly at our best. Then the woman head of our department, gazing round, said: ‘ I wonder what we shall all look like in 40 years time. Tt would be funny to meet again then. “ Seven of us, who were special friends, entered into a solemn pact that; ‘We being alive on June 24, will meet outside the main entrance of Westminster Abbey at noon,’ Two of the seven have since died, but the rest of us have kept in touch, although our lives run on rather varying lines. , ~ . “ Our last gathering was held in my house, but there were four of us only, as the fifth member was ill. I read her letter out to the others, and we all sent her little kindly notes. We call ourselves ‘ The Old Chums.’ I keep every cutting I can find about pacts of this kind and circulate them among the others.”