SOME PECULIAR WILLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 111, 6 November 1937, Page 27

SOME PECULIAR WILLS

Some curious documents deposited in Somerset House, particularly wills, were-mentioned by Mr. Arthur Ford in a recent 8.8.C. address, reports the "Listener."

"When a man makes his will, how his character comes out!" said Mr. I Ford. Men have been known to make their wills on the most extraordinary objects: egg-shells, doors, coin's, tablecloths, comic postcards, and even cheese, and I assure you that if properly witnessed they would be perfectly valid, though I can see even Somerset House drawing the line at filing a will on a piece of Gorgonzola. A few years ago a man left a hundred thousand pounds to the Zoo, on condition that his mother's picture was hung there—in the board-room. Four hundred pounds was left to a woman as long as she had a telephone in her house. Farthings seem popular. One testator left to two nephews six pennyworth of farthings each; and a man left his wife a farthing to, be sent in an unstamped envelope, because she called him a pig. One woman said in her will: 'Nothing shall come to myrela-

tives from me «ut a «ag of sand to rub themselves with.|

"What about this, one, from a rail-r way official's will: 'My estate would have been considerably largTer but for my unfortunate marriage to the clever-est-known legal' daylight robber. My associations with, this perambulating vinegar cruet I consider to have cost me over four, hundred pounds.'

. "Another husband left a yard of, rope to his .wife, hoping, she would know best how to make use of it. So much for happy marriage.

"The funeral directions in a will are sometimes, unusual. One man wrote: 'I have always had the reputation of being late for appointments. Make me ten minutes late for my funeral!1 And do you know that,walking about England somewhere is a young man whose will is tattooed" on "his back,; properly witnessed. Heaven knows how he signi ed it! Perhaps the strangest will at Somerset House is that recorded on the identity disc of a sailor lost at .the Battle of Jutland and whose .body was washed ashore. His last will and testa^ ment contained three thousand microscopic letters." ....■■