THE MISSES KIPPEN BEQUESTS TO PARTY FUNDS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 74, 28 March 1914, Page 13

THE MISSES KIPPEN BEQUESTS TO PARTY FUNDS

KEIR HARiIE'S STRANGE STORY. Not without humour and pathos is the story which lies behind the recent legacy of £10,000 which the Misses Elizabeth and Jane Kippen, of Edinburgh, bequeathed to Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. John Redmond, to be divided for the benefit of their respective parties. The story is told in the Labour Leader by Mr. Keir Hardie. "Elizabeth and Jane Kippen," he says, "were sisters who never married. They inherited a good bit of money from their father, who was, I think, an East Indian trader, and they added to the amount by judicious investments in this country and the United States of America. They travelled a great deal, and for the last twenty years of their lives had no settled home of their own. "I was elected in July, 1892, and on getting home was told that two quaintlydressed old' ladies had spent a week in the village making very exhaustive enquiries about my life and character. Later in the year we wero spending a few days with my wife's mother at Hamilton, and learned they had been there also, and had visited my wife's mother. "They told her frankly their errand. They knew that as a working man I would be none too flush of money, and they were anxious to help in this respect, provided they were satisfied that I was dependable. Their enquiries into my public record were assuring, but — was I a good husband? A mother-in-law was the best authority on that." The upshot was that Mr. Keir Hardie was invited to Edinburgh. The two ladies said they had been helping to finance the Parnellite section of the Irish party, and also wanted to help Socialism, believing that Nationalism and Socialism would one day be working together. They therefore proposed a written agreement to pay him £300 a year so long ashe remained in Parliament, and to make provision for it being continued after they-hrfd gone. Mr. Keir Hardie says that to a man without a shilling and the prospect, of having to earn his living for some time the offer had its practical advantages. But after thinking it over he declined the proposal, and suggested that money should be given to the Scottish Labour party, but this gave the ladies "mighty offence." Continuing his narrative, Mr. Keir Hardie says : — "Years passed ere I heard from them again, and then it took the form of a small Christmas gift. In the autumn of 1897 they sent me £100 as 'a gift,' to be disposed of as I pleased. I sent j part of it to the Engineers' Lockout Fund, part to the Washington Miners' Strike Fund, and the balance to the I.L.P. The next donation was £1000, sent through the Leader of the Irish party, and which I passed on to the I.L.P. Then they made me the channel of sending a very large sum to the funds of the Irish party. It was their way of doing things. This was followed by another gift of £2000 to the I.L.P. funds." Finally came the bequests under the will. "The Misses Kippen (adds the Labour Leader) belonged to a generation which has passed away. Quaint in dress, and full of an old-world courtesy, they must have felt strangely cut off from the modern whirlpool of life. But instinctively they loved frhe common people and the cause" of human freedom."