THE fishwives of Cullercoats this year collected £148 9s. 8d. on their life-boat day in July, although, with the life-boat station temporarily closed since the wreck of the Cullercoats life-boat last April, it could not be held as usual when the quarterly road exercise took place. This is the eighteenth annual collection, and the fishwives have now collected over £2,572.

Over fifty people took part in the col- lection, and Mrs. Polly Donkin, who was awarded the Institution's gold badge in 1931, and is now eighty-two years old, was again easily the most successful, with over £69. The total of her in- dividual collections is now over £875.

Mrs. Tom Lisle, who was awarded the gold badge this year, was second, with over £27, and Mrs. B. Mattison third, with over £15.

Both Mrs. Donkin and Mrs. Lisle took part in a descriptive broadcast of Cullercoats on 29th October. Mrs.

Donkin was interviewed while she was knitting for sailors and soldiers as she had done in the last war. She sang, recited and showed how the fishwives cried fish in the old days.

Mrs. Lisle spoke of her two sons, both serving at sea, and of her visit to London in the summer to receive her gold brooch from the Duke of Kent..