QUEER WILLS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 236, 4 October 1940, Page 5

QUEER WILLS.

SOME ODD BEQUESTS.

SKIN FOR DRUMHEADS.

Acooranbong (Xew South Wales), labourer, Reuben James Harries, 64, wrote his will in verse, and left everything, including his body, to his wife.

Probably the strangest will ever lodged in Sydney was one written some years ago on an egg shell.

I Another remarkable will was that of a coal miner trapped underground bv an explosion. He pricked his wrist and wrote his will with a match in bldod on a lump of coal.

"All to Mother," the will read, when discovered months later.

Wills on dictaphone and gramophone records are not uncommon, nowadays. By themselves, without similar testaments on paper and duly witnessed and signed, they're not legal. But some testators have personal reasons for wajiting their voice t* "speak from beyond the grave." ?

A Melbourne man left property to beneficiaries in England, America and Australia. On one record was the complete will. On others he spoke individually to each beneficiary of his gratitude to him and of the manner in which he wanted him to spend the bequest. Then there was the Sydney Greek, who owned properly in Australia and '. Greece. He made two recorded wills— one in English, the other in his native tongue.

An Australian (still happily living), who spoke his will into a dictaphone, in addition to the more conventional will, said:—

"There was a big dispute over the £60,000 Martin Burke estate, and there was a marathon case over the £800,000 Walker estate. But there will be no quarrel .over my few bob.

"My voice states in the plainest of plain English who my beneficiary is." Queerest American will is that "of Mr. Sanborn, of Medford (Massachusetts). He left his skin to the Medford Drum Corps to be tanned and made into drum-; headal .',."-

Provision of this macabre request was that on every anniversary of the battle of Bunker's Hill (June 17) the local drum-major should stand on the historic mound at sunrise and play "Yankee Doodle!"

On one side of the human drum parchment, stipulated the patriotic Mr. Sanborn, was to be inscribed the Declaration of Independence, and on tho other Alexander Pope's "Universal Prayer."

Xor was that all. The economical (if wordy) Mr. Sanborn left a rider:

"The remainder of my body is to be composed for a fertiliser to contribute to the growth of an American elm, to be planted in some rural thoroughfare.

that the weary wayfarer may rest, and innocent children play beneath its umbrageous branches rendered luxuriant by my remains."

The will was not complied with. A commercial traveller from Virginia (and he should know!) left money to found a Travellers' Rest with the solemn warning: "Let care be taken that women and men lodge not near together." A Sussex squire left money to the poor of his village, on condition they came to church before, the service begaii. . . . "If they can, let them eing the 15th Psalm. But for God's sake, 3 let there be no drunkards or common swearers."