AT THE BANK OF ENGLAND

Evening Star, Issue 11434, 29 December 1900, Page 4

AT THE BANK OF ENGLAND

At the Bank of England the unclaimed dividend volumes contain the records of large fortunes awaiting owners. Why these are left no man shall say. Over them the spirit of romance hovers. Lean back in your chair, close ycur eyes, and. let-the rays of -fancy play round tiem for a moment. What iife dramas instai.tly rise before the mental vision! One sees the stockholder going abroad, and there dying; one sees him disappear; and with him the only voucher for his holding in the funds; one sees him aged and decrepit, his memory & blank as to his investments, and, later, his descendants seeking in vain for some record of ;hem; one sees him dying intestate, leaving no will, no scrap of paper that enables bis next of kin to discover the extent of his possessions. That all these things might really happen we feel assured. And, indeed, we are not mistaken. If it were worth while I could give chapter and verse for that. But the most vivid imagination is powedess to picture the circumstances in which some funds are left undaimed. ilobody Would tkink for insianos. iLiA a man in " fnll possession of his faculties," as the reporter says of the centenarian he is perpetually discovering, could go for years without being conscious of an investment standing in his name. And yet such a tiling has actually occurred repeatedly. In one case an agent found a certain amount of stock to the credit of a City clergyman who was still living. Tho recipient of the windfall— for windfall the money was—knew nothing whatever about tho matter.. Ho himself had certainly not invested it, nor, as far as he could learn, had anybody done so for him. The only inference possible was that a parishioner had put the money in Government funds for him, and had forgotten to leave it to him in his or her will.

Who would suppose, again, that a sane person would suffer the pinch of poverty acutely, .and ut the same thus lew© unclaimed Government stock belonging to him ? Such conduct seems possible to a monomaniac only. Here, however, is a ease which will demonstrate that the individual, as distinguished from T»mnlrirwi in general, may do anything. An agent once proved that the persons entitled to £2OO worth of unclaimed stock purchased about thirty years previously were two sisters, the daughters of the lady in whose name it stood. They were amazed beyond measure to leaxn that their mother hod possessed such a. sum; indeed, for 'long they would nob believe that she had ever had so much money ill the wide world, and insisted that there most be some mistake. Their father—a clergyman—had been, they-stated, very-poor. Such was tlie difficulty he had jn. making both ends meet that he went to livo in one of tho West Indian islands. Even there, with no necessity to keep up appearances, and with little temptation to spend even sixpence in luxury, he was reduced to severe straits, and ultimately died in great poverty. This being so, it seemed irtcompnehensible to the two daughters that their mother should all the time have had £2OO, plus dividends. There was not the slightest doubt, however, that the money was hers,, and it was paid to her next of kin. . What hypothesis will fib this case? Perhaps—this is the agent's conjecture—the money belonged bo tho mother in her maiden name. For a time after her marriage she received the dividend, without the knowledge of her busbond, in that name. Ab liust she inadvertently signed the receipt at the bank in her married name, whereupon the clork remarked (this was before the days of the Married Women's Property Act) tfiat as she had changed her condition her husband's signature also would be necessary. Her helpmeet boing a clergyman, she thought that he would take a severe view of her secrecy. She decided, therefore, not to toll him anything about tho investment. Lastly, she intended to draw out the money ■when she came to England, but was prevented from accomplishing her purpose by dying abroad.—' Cassjeil's Saturday Journal.'