THE EDITOR, Sir:
YOUR STAFF reporter Claude Mills wrote the following in the Sunday Gleaner of August 28, 2005:
"If Reverend Ben Puente's vision for Jamaica is realised, Jamaica will experience its first mass weddings as soon as 2006."
Am I to understand that Dr. Puente, Mr. Mills and the Gleaner are NOT aware that mass weddings were held in Jamaica in the early 1950s (half century ago)?
I recall that Mary Leonora Morris-Knibb, a KSAC Councillor, assisted by Lady Molly Huggins, (wife of Sir John Huggins, governor of Jamaica 1943-1951), and by Lady Edris Elaine Trotman Allan (wife of Sir Harold Allan, first MHR to present the House with a Budget) organised many mass weddings, thereby implementing Morris-Knibb's concept to improve the standard of living and the quality of inter-personal relationships in Jamaica.
FREE WEDDING RINGS
Mass weddings then were marriages of common-law partners in groups of two to three hundred couples at a time. Their wedding rings were provided free of cost.
The objective of the marriages was not only to help promote stability and respect for the couples (many of whom had struggled against great social and financial odds to keep families together), but also to remove the stigma
of bastardy from countless Jamaican children.
It is fitting that the Rev. Puente should know that a Jamaican woman, Morris-Knibb came up with the idea decades ago.
I am, etc.,
ALMA MOCK YEN C.D.
