BRITISH WOMEN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19523, 24 June 1933, Page 10

BRITISH WOMEN

FIGHT FOR NATIONALITY. ’ British women married to foreigners are no longer required to register as aliens when in Great Britain (states an exchange). This modification of the existing order was announced by the home office recently. It came in time to prevent an Australian-born woman, Winifred James, who in 1913 lost her nationality by marriage to an American from whom she was subsequently divorced from having to appear at Bow Street Police Court in answer to a summons for non-compliance with the registration order.

The removal of the necessity to register lifts from the British-born woman an irritating accompaniment to the necessity of being classed as a foreigner while living in her native land. But it does not touch the root of her grievance —the fact that British women are forced to assume the nationality of their husbands. The women’s organisations which are working for the complete independence of the married women in nationality matters declare their position to have been rendered rather more difficult by the change. It has deprived them of the means of protesting by a failure to register, and of thereby bringing their case into public notice. Failure to register has been used for publicity purposes on several occasions recently. In November last year, Mrs. Grace Tyndall, of Newent, Gloucestershire, was threatened with a fine or seven days’ imprisonment. But she was eventually allowed to retain her British nationality although she was the wife of a man who has become, since marriage, a naturalised American citizen.