There are plenty of accidents and some kinds of sickness that you can't blame a person for, but drying up into barren, unlovely old maidhood ought to be forbidden by law.
"Comrade Yetta"
Albert Edwards
There her position was in some respects improved, though the head nurse was a woman of vulgar instincts, and given to nagging, as women verging on forty, face to face with old maidhood, often are.
"The Life of Thomas Wanless, Peasant"
Alexander Johnstone Wilson
In her powerful novel Aus guter Familie, Gabrielle Reuter describes the life of a German girl whose parents cannot give her a dowry, and who is doomed in consequence to old maidhood and to all the disappointments, restrictions, and humiliations of unsought women.
"Home Life in Germany"
Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick