ABSTRACT
The circumstances in which people are widowed vary from the totally unexpected to the predictable. But once the event has occurred it is clearly labelled so it is a crisis which society can identify. Services and help can be mobilized. This study aims to show the circumstances and ways in which this can most usefully and helpfully be done for elderly widows and widowers. It is the old who are most likely to be widowed and they face this crisis at a time when they may also be adjusting to ill health and increasing infirmity and to retirement with its problems of role identity and adaptation to an increase in leisure and a decrease in wealth. So our survey is about the range of problems which are likely to face the elderly widowed from housing to health, loneliness to lethargy, and penury to the practicalities of day-to-day living.
