25 JANUARY 1952, Page 16

Spinsters .

S1R,-1, offered Dr. Mahoney-Jones three figures; a reliable figure twenty years old, showing a large excess of marriageable women; an unreliable figure two years old, showing a small excess of women, and an unreliable and artificially biassed figure two years old, showing a minute excess of men (0:043 per cent.). Gaily she seizes the last, generously abates her " far mare " men to "more " and says I have ".strengthened her assertion," which she by the way fundamentally changes by introducing the proviso " apart from war losses." Let us now wait for the reliable up-to-date figure to be published, that of the 1951 census, and in the meantime Iet us remember that we cannot yet say the causes of spinsterhood are always psychological and never [This correspondence is now closed.—Ed. Spectator.]