FREAK WILLS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21020, 8 May 1930, Page 15

FREAK WILLS.

SOME UNUSUAL' BEQUESTS. With a .London golfer requesting that his ashes be scattered under a hated beech tree on his favourite course, and another testator leaving £IOO,OOO to the London Zoo on condition that his mother’s picture is hung in the boardroom, other odd wills are thrown into prominence. - Not long ago a Welsh philanthropist expressed in his will a desire to punish persons who imported German horseradish and Spanish onions into Britain, and a wish to punish doubly Cabinet Ministers who allowed, them to be imported. . . ' Perhaps as extraordinary a will as any on record was that left by a wealthy Frenchwoman who bequeathed the equivalent of .£IO,OOO «o any person who would watch beside her grave day and-night for a year, the watcher to speak to no one .except whomsoever brought^him or her food and drink. This legacy has never .been earned. In 1920 a Londoner directed that all his movable property should be taken out into the middle of the Channel and thrown into the sea. In June, 1924, a London woman took the greatest care in passing on to a younger sister what was Apparently a precious heirloom—a bracelet of white hair from the tail of a mule belong* ing to Pope Pius XII. In the same month a woman, writing on a sheet of ordinary "stationery,” left her teeth to the flower fund of a Southport, church. As it happens the law of England relating to wills is now undergoing revision. It is thought that this revision "toay be due to the increasing number of cases in which spinsters and bachelors, particularly leave their money to absurd charities or to animals, when it might be a godsend to the family of a deserving niece or nephew. One will'd this kind contained the following remarkable provisos:— . „ “ I bequeath to my monkey, my dear and amusing Jacko, the sum of £lO sterling per annum, to be employed for bis sole and exclusive use and benefit; to my faithful dog. Shock, and my. well-beloved cat, Tib, a pension of £3 sterling; and I desire that, in the case of the death of either, the lapsed pension • shall pass to the other two, between whom it shall he equally divided. “On the death of all three the sura appropriated to this purpose shall become the property of my daughter Gertrude, to whom I give this preference among my children because of the large family she has, and the difficulty she finds in bringing them up.” An exceptionally odd will was made by Henry Furstone. of Alton, Hampshire, who died in 1775 worth about £7OOO. Having no relations, he left this large sum to "the first man of my name who shall marry_ a woman of the same name, to be paid on their wedding day.” Few wills, one imagines, can have aroused the ire of near relatives to a extent than was done by that of a certain jDr Dunlop, owner of an estate called Gairhead, in Scotland, who died about a century ago. Said the doctor in his will: — " I leave the property of Gairhead and all the propetry I may be possessed of to my sisters Maggie and Betsy; the former because she is married to a minister whom—may God help him—she henpecks; the latter because she is married te nobody, nor is likely to be for she is an old maid and not marketable. 1 "I leave to Parson Gbavassie my big silver snuff box as a small token of gratitude to him for taking my sister Maggie, whom no man of taste would have taken. " I leave to John Cadell a silver teapot, to the end that he may drink tea therefrom to comfort him .under the affliction of a slatternly wife." This bequest was once recorded:— "An English gentleman bequeathed to bis two daughters their weight in £1 bank notes. A finer pair of paper weights has never yet been heard of, for the elder daughter received £51,200 and the younger £57,344." The longest will on record in this country, and probably the longest ever made, was admitted to probate in 1925. It consisted of 97,940 words—enough to fill 18 full pages of a newspaper. This was the will of Mrs Frederica Evelyn Stilwel Cook, the widow of a wholesale dry goods merchant. She disposed of property valued at £20 ; 583. Matthew Arnold’s will contained exactly 13 words, and that of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen only nine. The shortest will at Somerset House is, however, that of a Londoner who wrote on the back of an old envelope, “All for mother.—C. T.,” and thus dealt with £8250, The smallest will at Somerset House is engraved on the back of a sailor’s identity disc, and the writing is so_ fine that it can be read only with the aid of a microscope. It was written by a man who was killed at the battle of Jutland with both his witnesses. Some wills have been written on paper bags, others on the backs of bills. One very strange will is on a page torn from a policeman's notebook. The policeman who wrote it was called to a house in 1909 by a lonely old man who, feeling that he was dying, leaned from his window at midnight, dictated his will, appointed the policeman his executor —and died.—Sunday Dispatch.