pew-opener

The pew-opener and her children failed not to keep their appointment, and Cecilia presently contrived to settle them in her neighbourhood: where the poor woman, as she recovered her strength, soon got a little work, and all deficiencies in her power of maintaining herself were supplied by her generous patroness.

Cecilia 2008

The clergyman now began to enquire of the pew-opener, what she knew of the woman, who she was, and how she had got into the church?

Cecilia 2008

She could recollect, however, one only thing that had escaped her vigilance, which was acquainting the pew-opener, and two or three other poor women who had weekly pensions from her, that they must, at least for the present, depend no longer upon her assistance.

Cecilia 2008

Yet, such was her dread of his austerity and the arrogance of his reproaches, that, by choice, she would have preferred an habitation with her own pensioner, the pew-opener, to the grandest apartment in Delvile Castle while he continued its lord.

Cecilia 2008

When my friend, the fashionable John Pimlico, married the lovely Lady Belgravia Green Parker, the excitement was so general that even the little snuffy old pew-opener who let me into the seat was in tears.

Vanity Fair 2006

Mrs. Creed, the pew-opener, confirmed these statements to Doctor

The History of Pendennis 2006

His widow was a pew-opener in the cathedral hard by; his eldest son was a little scamp of a choir-boy, who played toss-halfpenny, led his little brothers into mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an angel.

The History of Pendennis 2006

She walked up the middle aisle with as much self-possession as though the chancel had belonged to her family for years; and the respectable pew-opener absolutely deserted two or three old ladies whom she was attending, to show Mrs Greenow into her seat.

Can You Forgive Her? 1993

Lubin shall come and be an acolyte, and we'll get Mr Buskin to be stage-manager, and you shall be the pew-opener.

Austin and His Friends Frederic H. Balfour

There is no inscription; but visitors are usually told about Mrs. Charlotte Hart, the apparently impecunious pew-opener at the church, who surprised her friends by dying worth close upon £3,000, and by leaving

Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield A Short History of the Foundation and a Description of the Fabric and also of the Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Less George Worley