FAMOUS MISERS

Taranaki Daily News, 9 August 1930, Page 14 (Supplement)

FAMOUS MISERS

MILLIONAIRE’S FREE MILK. One of the greatest misers of all time was John Elwes, member of the House of Commons for Berkshire, on three different occasions. Miserliness was in the family. His mother possessed. as a widow, the sum of £lOO,OOO, and it was commonly said that she kept it onlv by starving herself to death. His uncle, Sir Harvey Elwes, lived on £lOO a year, and died worth £250.000. John Elwes himself built a number of fine London streets, but lived most. of his life in one drab room containing only two chairs and a table. As he grew older he became more and more thrifty, although his inheritance from his mother had increased enormously as a result of his shrewd methods. Latterly he covered the windows of his country house with paper to save having them reglazcd, and he rode his horses on the grass by the side of the road rather than wea” out their shoes. At his deatn he was’ found to be worth £850,W0. Another man whose miserly habits were the talk of his day was the Tate Marquis of Clanricarde, who died leaving £3,400,000. He did much of his own clothes mending, and he was often seen with -stitches an inch long in his coats. One of his, idiosyncrasies consisted of carrying hard-boiled eggs in his pockets to obviate the necessity for buying a meal .while on a journey. Edward , Yates, a. South London builder, was responsible for . the erection of numbers of fine residences in th. course of his active life, but although he was a millionaire he preferred to live out his days’ in a lowly ■dwelling in Walworth. He. stinted himself even of. penny, bus rides, but his niggardliness did not extend to resisting the appeals of others. for. help. He gave considerable sums to charity, and he died leaving property ; worth. hundreds of thousands of. pounds. But if ever a history of the greatest misers is written a name that will figure prominently in it is that of M. Vandille, a one/time chief magistrate, of Boulogne. His fortune (says a writer in the Cape Argus) in his seventyeighth year was' £900,0-00, and it is recorded that by .this time he had converted everything he. possessed, save Ins scanty wardrobe, into cash, pis customary diet was bread and milk,. the milk being obtained in' the form ot samples for analysis seized by him from milkmen in his capacity of magistrate. So much store did he set by this trick that when he -was. offered A more important post in Paris he hesitated, fearing to lose his free drinks of milk. After the post he walked to the capital, begging his food by the way. ' On being seized by what proved to. be his last illness, M. Vandille sent for an apothecary to bleed him. Ths

apothecary, asked in advance tt fee. which the miser ‘denounced as' exorbitant, whereupon the man left. Finally a poor barber was sent for, his terms being three sous every time he opened a vein, with a reduction if the neces; sary amount of blood was let in one operation. - Mr. \ T andille, . miserly to'the last, agreed to this alternative, and died as a result of it. ...■>< • ■