DUKE’S ECONOMY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20547, 6 May 1941, Page 4

DUKE’S ECONOMY

ZOO ANIMALS KILLED TENANTS EAT BISON LONDON, March 27. Since the new Duke of Bedford started to kill off the animals in his father’s private zoo, the villagers of Woburn have been eating bison for dinner. Stewed bison, they say, makes richer gravy than ordinary meat. Bison liver is delicate—like an oyster—if it is carefully fried. , Roast fawn and venison they are also eating. The villagers buy these joints at the Park Farm on the Woburn Abbey Estate.

Another of the duke’s economies has been to dismiss a number of the staff. Five chauffeurs have gone, as well as gamekeepers and indoor servants. Many of them have found war work near by. The villagers lived for years in feudal dependence on the old duke, who looked after them when they were sick, sent them to specialists and to health spas, provided their houses and gave them work. He was a beneficient, autocratic godfather

The prayer-books of the new duke, who announced that he was leaving the Church of England, are still in place in the ducal pew at St. Mary’s Church, Woburn. He has stopped the stipend of the vicar, Archdeacon Martindale, and he declined to maintain the church, which is his private property. “We have economised in heat by having the services in the crypt, which wc can heat with a gas fire,” the archdeacon said. “The expenses, including my stipend and church maintenance, amounted only to £750 a year.”

The Duke of Bedford is now in Scotland. “I have no plans about the future of the abbey until the war is over,” he said over the telephone. “Naturally, because of the food shortage, I have had to get rid of some of the animals, but there is still a number left. My income, owing to war taxation, is about one-fourth of what my father’s was.”

The Duke of Bedford, formerly Marquess of Tavistock, is 54. He filed a petition for divorce last year. While Marquess of Tavistock he was a keen bird fancier and also bred spiders as a hobby. Last March, after a visit to Dublin, he published “peace terms” which were claimed to be acceptable to Hitler. The terms were disowned both in Germany and Britain.