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Race, women and health · Claim record

The Watchtower of 15 September 1941 reported a convention discourse by J. F. Rutherford in which, advising against marriage before the expected end, he asked: 'Why, then, should a man who has the prospect before him of being of the great multitude now tie himself up to a stack of bones and a hank of hair?' The report marks the line as followed by applause.

Claim ID claim-attitudes-1941-bones-and-hank-of-hairConcerns 15 September 1941Explicit statement
Explicit statement · 15 September 1941 Supported

The Watchtower of 15 September 1941 reported a convention discourse by J. F. Rutherford in which, advising against marriage before the expected end, he asked: 'Why, then, should a man who has the prospect before him of being of the great multitude now tie himself up to a stack of bones and a hank of hair?' The report marks the line as followed by applause. The Watchtower, 15 September 1941jwfacts.com, July 2022

The organisation’s position or later explanation: The organisation's current publications tell husbands to honour their wives and state that God 'did not make men more intelligent or more talented than women'. No source in this file establishes when or how the counsel against marrying before the end was withdrawn; that should be traced and cited before the site says anything about it.

Show the evidence (2 sources)
Primary JW publication Supported

The Watchtower

15 September 1941 · p.287 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“Why, then, should a man who has the prospect before him of being of the great multitude now tie himself up to a stack of bones and a hank of hair?”

The page is part of an unsigned report of a convention discourse delivered by the organisation's president, J. F. Rutherford, and introduced on the same page by the chairman as 'CHILDREN OF THE KING'; '(Applause)' is marked through the report at intervals. The sentence quoted comes in a passage advising against marriage before the expected end, and the report prints it inside quotation marks, so it is given as Rutherford's own spoken words and not as the reporter's summary. The sentences on either side of it are the reporter's summary, unquoted.

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The page image was downloaded and read on 19 September 2026, and the quoted sentence, the date and the page number were all legible on it. It is recorded as supported rather than verified because the only copy located is hosted by a site critical of the organisation: the Watchtower Online Library holds The Watchtower only from 1950, and no 1941 volume of the magazine is on the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive items titled 'The Watchtower 1940-1941' and 'The Watchtower 1941-1942' are the student newspaper of Wesleyan College, Macon, Georgia, and the item titled 'RIHS Watchtower 1941' is the yearbook of Rock Island Public High School, Rock Island, Illinois; none of the three is Watch Tower Society material. The Internet Archive does hold a French-language Watch Tower volume for 1941 (item '2b-1941', 'La Tour de Garde - Année 1941'), which would have served as an independent witness; its issue for 15 September 1941 was opened and does not carry this convention report, that edition being an abridged translation. No second copy of the page exists that this audit could reach.

Scan provenance. Photographic scan of the printed page hosted by jwfacts.com (discovery site); no copy held by the organisation or by a library was located. The image is a photograph of a magazine page carrying the running head 'September 15, 1941 The WATCHTOWER 287', in the two-column setting and typeface of the magazine of that period, and it was read as an image in this session. Its chain of custody is a single critical site and it cannot be checked against another copy.

Notes. The phrase echoes Rudyard Kipling's 1897 poem 'The Vampire' ('A rag and a bone and a hank of hair'). Secondary sites say Rutherford used the expression in public talks generally; what the scan establishes is its appearance in this convention report. The same page reports him saying of a resurrected Deborah: 'Soon you will see Barak and Deborah (I got a picture of her in this book), and when you see her you will love her very much. She is a real woman . . .' (the sentence runs on past the foot of the page).

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-wom-w-1941-0915-convention-report

Discovery source only Unverified

jwfacts.com, “Watchtower's View of Women / Watchtower Quotes Regarding Women's role, submission and headship”

July 2022 · Paul Grundy · jwfacts.com

A site critical of the organisation which collects citations on this subject. It was used here only to find out which publications, issues and pages to look at; every quotation recorded in this file was then read in the publication itself, except where the entry says otherwise.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read on 19 September 2026 as a finding aid. Nothing on this page is treated as evidence. Where its citations were checked against the originals, most page references were accurate; the exceptions are recorded in the notes of the individual sources.

Notes. The page states the date of its last update as July 2022.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-wom-jwfacts-womens-place

Claim page Correct or update

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-attitudes-1941-bones-and-hank-of-hair/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.