HUMOROUS LEGACY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 280, 26 November 1938, Page 25

HUMOROUS LEGACY.

PATENT MEDICINE SHARES. FRIEND'S GIFT TO DOCTOR. (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON", November Dr. John William Dalgliesb. of Sidmouth. Devon, has inherited shares in a. patent medicine firm under the will of a solicitor who was his friend for 45 yeaiK. The solicitor, Mr. Charles Walker Holmes, of Capel House, Xew Broad Street, E.C., added in the will: "I hope that he will appreciate "the humour of such a legacy." Said Dr. Dalgliesli: "I may accept this legacy, but I shall have to get rid of the shares at once. The British Medical Association do not allow us to have anything to do with patent medicines. "It might appear strange that a solicitor should overlook this point, but it was just the sort of thing my friend would do. He would be quite amused at my position as a doctor having shares in a patent medicine concern." Gift of Diamond. Mr. Holmes died at Priory Mill, Lechlade, Gloucestershire, last July, aged 68. i His estate amounted to £11,987, net j personalty £11,901. "We met in South Africa." Dr. Dalgliesli so id. "He had dealings with gold and diamond mining companies out there, and knew men like Cecil Rhodes, the Rhodesia pioneer, and Dr. Jameson, of the Jameson raid." Memory of those South Africa days is the bequest to his daughter of a Kimberley diamond. Mr. Holmes played a violin aboard ship on his trips to South Africa. He prized that violin, made by Gagliano, of Naples, greatly. He played it with a gold-mounted bow made by Charles Tomassin, of Paris. In his will he gives Dr. Harry Bowen Williams, another friend, the option to purchase it "for his personal use and enjoyment, but not for resale." His last direction was that his body should be cremated, his ashes scattered, and that his funeral should be as simple and inexpensive as possible.