MRS. BELLA MATTISON whose portrait is on page 254 is the last of the fisher- wives of Cullercoats to eollect for the Life-boat Service.

The collections started in 1922 when twenty-six of the fisherwives, among them Mrs. Mattison, took out collecting boxes when the life-boat—a pulling and sailing boat in those days—held her quarterly summer exercise. They did the thing in style; arranged for a neigh- bouring band to come over and play; entertained the band to tea; paid for band and tea out of their own pockets, and collected £58. The collections, so generously begun, went on with increas- ing success. The twenty-six original fisherwives increased to over sixty.

Some collected not only at the summer exercise, but right through the summer.

By the tenth year the £58 had risen to £199, and the total for the ten years was £1,253. Eight years later when the war came in 1939, the total was £2,572.

During the war the collections were still made, and increased, but as the war went on they were more and more in the hands of the three fisherwives who had almost always been at the top of the list, Mrs. Polly Donkin, Mrs.

Tom Lisle, and Mrs. Bella Mattison.

Mrs. Donkin had from the beginning headed the list each year. She collected more than a quarter of the total of £1,253 in the first ten years, and in 1930, she was awarded the gold brooch for distinguished honorary service. She was then seventy-three. The Prince of Wales, as President of the Institu- tion, presented the brooch to her at the annual meeting. In 1939 Mrs. Tom Lisle was awarded the brooch. She had been collecting for fourteen years, and had collected about £300. The brooch was presented to her by the Duke of Kent, who was then the Institution's President. Mrs. Mattison was awarded the brooch in 1942. In that, the third year of the war, the fisherwives collected the record sum of £449. Mrs. Matti- son's share of t was £150, made up of about 20,000 coins, whick weighed four hundredweight, or three times her own weight.

Of the three only Mrs, Mattison remains. Mrs. Tom Lisle died some years ago, and Mrs. Polly Donkin in March of this year, at the age of 93.

The collection still goes on, but is now entirely in Mrs. Mattison's hands. Her record is remarkable. In each of the eight years from 1943 to 1951 (in 1946 no collection was allowed) she has collected over £200. Her total is now £2,060. It is more than a third of the whole of the fisherwives' collection which, since 1922, has amounted to £5,449. Mrs. Mattison has been a branch of the Institution in herself..