PENSIONERS AND RICH FORWARD DONATIONS TO THANKSGIVING FUND

Wanganui Chronicle, 18 May 1950, Page 5

PENSIONERS AND RICH FORWARD DONATIONS TO THANKSGIVING FUND

LONDON, May 17 (Reed 7.15 pm). Token gifts from the poorest in the community as well as large sums from industrial and commercial organisations are regarded as being one of the most satisfying aspects of the support given to the Lord Mayor's National Thanksgiving Fund for food parcels from the Dominions and the United States.

Many old age pensioners are among the contributors. Some examples are mentioned by “The Times.” A man and his wife, both over 74, of Cheshire, sent 11 as “some small return for manj' parcels received” from the Commonwealth and the United States.

A man at Tavistock, “past three score years and ten,” accompanied his modest gift with the message “Such a scheme, conceived with imagination and for such a worthy object,”—to develop a residential centre in London for students from overseas—“can never fail for want of financial support and will, in God’s good time, become an establiAied fact.”

Four old-age pensioners living at Lower Clapton, London, have sent 12 between them, “The old and sick” at St. Mary Bourne, Hampshire, 10s and the Darby and Joan Club of Sheffield 1000 pennies. One of the oldest contributors is a 93-year-old woman of Harpenden, I Who received a parcel from Princess ' Elizabeth’s wedding gift, and another is an aged pensioner on Caldy Island, off Pembrokeshire, who, in a letter to the Lord Mayor related that her father was born in Watling Street, near the Mansion House, in 1836 and was educated with his brothers at a City of London School. The one word “gladly'’ accompanied a cheque for 10 guineas. A Manchester man condemned the scheme at length, but enclosed a cheque for £5O. . . .i Collections are being made in all parts of the country. A Sunday cinema performance at Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, brought 1153 19s 9d; the Scouts, Cubs, Girl Guides and Brownies of Aylesbury and district collected 15 2s lid at a St. George’s Day service; from Tregare, Monmouthshire, a school with fewer than 20 pupils, “in a sparsely populated, widely scattered area,” has sent £4 13s Bd. A girls high school at Rusholme, Manchester, has sent 120.—Special Correspondent NE.P.A.