REMARKABLE PLEDGES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIII, Issue 12160, 26 March 1900, Page 6

REMARKABLE PLEDGES.

(Tit-Bits.t A short time ago, in the course cf a County Court case, it transpired that an eld lady had, five and a half years ago, pledged a skirt and pair of shoes for 2s; the peculiarity with regard to the incident lies in the fact that, although she immediately afterwards went to France,'she'regularly each year forwarded sixpence for .interest and the postage for a receipt. This must be very nearly a record. • " Uncle " must be sorely putito it, at times where to store some of the articles that ore brought to his establishment to,be 'hypothecated ; for instance, he must observe* the approach of winter with horror, for at that season of the year bicycles must be stored, and nowhere can they be stowed away with greater convenience to-their owner than in his establishment. In the course of some bankruptcy proceedings last year the debtor mentioned that he had pledged an omnibus which cost him £294 for £4O; the feelings of the pawnbroker who had to house this cumbrous article can better be imagined than described.

Early last July, All Saints',, South Lambeth, waxed exceedingly joyful because the historic Communion chair, which i s one of their proudest possessions and which originally came from Farnham Casfrle, was restored to them. The chair was stolen from the church about a year ago, and, a reward being offered, it was found in a Stockwell. pawnbroker's shop, 'where it had been rLEDGED FOR TEN SHILLINGS. Some three or four years agio the authorities of the Bank -o'f England had. to consider the question whether or nob they would pay over good gold in exchange for two halves of bank notes, for £lO and £5 respectively, which were presented for payment, together with pawntickets for the missing halves, by the executor appointed to wind up the affairs of their late owner. To pawn bank notes appears, at first •sight, to be the action of a lunatic, but the tickets bore a date early in the century, before facilities for the rapid transmission' of money existed, and it is thought that the recipient of the other halves, being in immediate want of cash, must have pledged and afterwards failed to redeem them—a circumstance that the pawnbroker would greatly deplore. The bank paid the money on receiving an undertaking that they should be indemnified if the remaining halves were presented. A genealogical tree seems a strange article to pawn, but one was sold a little time ago in a North London auction room at a sale of unredeemed pledges, and fetched Ts 6d, solely because its case was of ebony and was silver mounted. The tree related to the ancestry of one of the oldest families in the land, and started with a -warrior who came over with the Conqueror. Strange as this pledge is, it does not eclipse that of a denizen of the East End, who was wont, when in financial straits, to pledge one of his eyes—a glass eye, we hasten to add—for THE MODEST SUM OF FOTjHPENCE. The financial difficulties in which geniuses sometimes find themselves were strikingly exemplified by a discovery made some four years ago of an old pawn ticket, dated 1570, bearing the signature of Torquato Tasso, the great Italian poet, and the following inscription: "I the undersigned, herewith acknowledge the receipt, of twenty-five lire from Signor Abraham Levi, for which he holds as security a sword of my father, four sheets and two tablecloths. —March find, 1570, Torquato Tasso." Moreover, in 1897, the Queen-Regent of Spain herself advanced £IOO to take out of pawn the gold crown bestowed upon the Spanish poet Zorilla, who died in 1895, and presented the

same to the museum at Valladolid, th& poet's native town. This is not. the first time that a crown has been pawned, io£ history tells us that the crown and regalia: of England, when pledged to\the City o| London by Richard 11., in 1386, put J32oo<i into the latter's pocket—if he had one. ; It is not generally known that the Ork< ney Islands are an unredeemed pledge. Af a matter of fact, they were subject to Scandinavian Crown until 1468, when thej were given to James 111. of Scotland «4 security for the dowry of his wife, Marl garet of Denmark, and never redeemed! In 1803 Sweden pledged Wismar,- a German seaport on the Baltic that came into hei possession in 1649, to Mecklenburg for' aj sum of money, reserving, however, thej right of redemption in 1903—it will beinj teresting to see whether she takes the citj out of pawn. Apropos of towns and State! in pawn, it is interesting to note that 3 couple of years ago it was reported that thjj Republic'of Honduras was to. be pledged! to a syndicate, who were to run the counf try as a commercial concern, and at th* same time relieve her of an internal debU; amounting to £16,500,000. If the schemC were to be carried through this would \ti the biggest pledge on record. ";'