MILLIONAIRE’S BEQUESTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 August 1929, Page 5

MILLIONAIRE’S BEQUESTS

CHARACTERISTIC GENEROSITY TO EMPLOYEES & CHARITIES (Australian Press Assn.—United Service.) (By Cable—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received August 5, 9.30 a.m.) LONDON, August 4. The tobacco millionaire, Bernhard Baron, made a characteristic will. About a score of employees and personal servants will receive a hundred to five hundred Carreras shares, each at present worth over £l3OO. One housemaid gets fifty shares. The will appoints five executors and trustees, including his son Louis, and Lord Reading, who gets £5OOO. The will directs cremation of the body, the ashes to be deposited in the Jewish Synagogue, Willesden, with a small Uniop Jack and Stars and Stripes. The factory shall be closed on the funeral day, to enable the employees, “whom I really loved,” to attend the funeral. He hoped that they will all attend, but wished the simplest ceremony. In order to avoid law suits, the will provides that if the executors and trustees disagree, his son’s views shall be final and decisive. All legacies shall be paid free of death duty. When all the bequests are paid, seventy per cent, of the remainder goes to members of the family .on trust, in named proportions. Thirty per cent, becomes a charity trust. He allotted £60,000 to certain Jewish charities. The distribution of the remainder is left to the discretion of the trustees, in the proportion of onefifth Jewish charities and four-fifths to Christian. “I loved my Christian brethren as much as the Jewish,” he said.

His solicitors estimate that .Mr Baron was worth 5 millions sterling. The death duties will absorb two millions, thus the charities will receive one million.