FORTY YEARS AFTER

Evening Star, Issue 19783, 6 February 1928, Page 13

FORTY YEARS AFTER

SEVEN WOMEN'S PACT FIVE TO MEET AGAIN. Midday cu Midsummer’s Day, 1931, may see (.lie fulfilment of a. strange •“ -ty-year-old reunion pact at Westminster Abbey. The pact to meet again was made at noon on Midsummer’s Day, 1891, between seven girls working as art assistants in a large London pottery factory. “I am ono of the five survivors of the pact,” said Mrs M. Reading, of Korbury, recently, “ and the other four live m Brondesbury, West Kensington, West Baling, 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 forty years’ time. It 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, 1931, will meet outside t.ho 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. 1 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.”