Marriage certificate no further details given. On 5 September 2005, the Registrar General in England and Wales officially abolished the traditional terms of "bachelor" and "spinster" and substituted the more politically correct "single" to coincide with the reform that introduced civil partnerships, explaining, "The word single will be used to mean a couple who has never been through a marriage or civil partnership." Unlike birth and death registrations, the local (church) copies of marriage registers for churches are treated as ecclesiastical records and thus are deposited in diocesan record offices or county record offices (often but not always the same office) when
Spinster family caretaker for their family of origin or for a married sibling's children, "poor relations" who would work "to earn their keep" as nannies or unpaid domestics. For example, being a governess was the fate expected by rejected titular orphan in Charlotte Brontë's novel "Jane Eyre" (1847); Eyre retained that status until the man she loved was widowed and available. A common theme in the fiction writings of author/poet Sandra Cisneros is marital disillusionment; for example. in the poem "Old Maids" (1994). In the Charles Dickens' classic "Great Expectations", the primary antagonist is Miss Havisham, a spinster embittered by being