STILL MRS WEBB

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17783, 7 August 1929, Page 5

STILL MRS WEBB

WILL NOT USE TITLE. Mrs Sydney Webb, wife of the Secretary for the Dominions, has decided not to use the title which her husband’s elevation to the peerage has conferred on her. Mr Webb has chosen the. title of Baron Passfleld of Passfleld Corner in the county of Southampton. Mrs Webb told of her decision In one sentence. 1 “I intend to continue to be Mrs Sidney Webb," she said, and nodded her head in determined emphasis. “But, Mrs Sidney Webb, will you explain your reasons for taking such an unprecedented step?" I asked: “No morel” she declared. “I’ll say no more. You know I never give interviews.”

But, disguised as a form of farewell, this last question was, so to speak, waved to her: “You will always be Mrs Sidney Webb, and not Lady Passfleld?” Mrs Webb nodded again, and with a laugh and a “Good-bye” she >vas gone. “Illogical.’* A woman who has known Mrs Webb for a long time assured me that nothing could be more definite than that she would never permit anyone to address her as “Lady Passfleld.” “There seems to be no doubt,” said this friend, “that Mrs Webb’s exactly logical mind clearly perceives no illogicality in using a title which has been conferred on her husband for reasons w r hich pertain essentially to him. She will not in the least mind any curious situation that may arise as a consequence of her decision.

“If she and her husband attend a reception of any kind anywhere she will desire that they shall be announced as ‘Lord Passfleld and Mrs Sidney Webb.’ “It must not be thought that there is any sort of disagreement between Mrs Webb and her husband over the question of his acceptance of a peerage.

“No two persons in the world are more perfectly and absolutely ‘one.’ Their views and thoughts are as identical and 'wholly harmonised as they could possibly be.” Mrs Webb, who was married in 1891, has made a life-long study of social conditions in London and other big cities and has wTitten on sociological question. She took part with Charles Booth in the great investigation of London’s social conditions which resulted in the publication of “The Life and Labour of the People."