In the 1931 Census 138,670 women and 15,000 men declared that they were nurses. 88% of the women were single, 5% married and 7% widowed or divorced. In 1930 nurses in the voluntary hospitals worked 117 hours a fortnight in London and 119 in the provinces. In 1936 the London County Council introduced a standard 54 hour week for nurses and in 1938 moved to a 96-hour fortnight. In 1935 county councils began training courses for assistant nurses to care for the chronic sick. In 1937 the Trades Union Congress adopted a "Nurses’ Charter", demanding a 96-hour fortnight, improvement of the amenities of nurses’ homes and arguing that nurses should be able to live out. At that time the average nurse was working 104 hours per fortnight. The Earl of Athlone was appointed to chair a committee of inquiry into the arrangements for "recruitment, training and registration and terms and conditions of service" for nurses. It found that about 12,000 new recruits were needed each year. It recommended higher pay, a 96-hour fortnight and four weeks holiday a year, and the removal of unreasonable restrictions on nurses life. It advocated more domestic staff and that grants should be made from public funds to Voluntary hospitals to pay for these improvements. The armed forces estimated at the beginning of the war that they needed 5000 trained nurses. Up to 67,000 were thought to be needed to care for the expected air-raid casualties. This was more than the number of trained nurses in employment. A Civil Nursing Reserve was set up - 7000 trained nurses, 3000 assistant nurses and also nursing auxiliaries. The auxiliaries were given fifty hours training in hospital before they started work. After protests it was agreed that they should not do domestic work. 6,200 from the Civil Nursing Reserve were working in hospitals in June 1940. The Ministry of Health guaranteed a salary of £40 to nursing students in training, about double what voluntary hospitals were paying before the war. During the war nurses belonged to Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), as they had during World War I, and as they remain today. (Nurses belonging to the QAIMNS are informally called "QA"s.) Members of the Army Nursing Service served in every overseas British military campaign during World War II, as well as at military hospitals in Britain. At the beginning of World War II, nurses held officer status with equivalent rank, but were not commissioned officers. In 1941, emergency commissions and a rank structure were created, conforming with the structure used in the rest of the British Army.