pew-opener

• “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

• “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

• “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

• “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

• “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

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

  The History of Pendennis

• “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

• “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?

• “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

• “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

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