SALVATION ARMY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19805, 22 May 1934, Page 12

SALVATION ARMY

BEQUESTS THROUGH CURIOUS CHANNELS Money reaches the coffers of the Salvation Army in many curious ways, through many curious channels, and for very excellent reasons, says a London newspaper. It has been left a substantial sum of money by a man I who hud seen the Army’s rescue work on the Thames Embankment, and for that reason had a very keen interest in its affairs and actions. The man in question, the late Mr Frank Edwin Leighton, of Ingatestone, Essex, a director of the ,Home and Colonial Stores, Limited, left £22,001, with net personality £10,689. After providing for several relatives and others, he left the residue of his property to the Salvation Army, “for social work in England, hoping they will use the money in providing shelter and food for homeless and destitute women, whose only qualification shall be their necessity.” The gift recalls the huge benefaction of a millionaire, who left the whole of his property to the Salvation Army, which thus, strangely enough, came into indirect connection with the most sensational murder trial of last century—the case which is designated in all reference books as that of Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner. Palmer, a doctor at Rugeley, paid far more attention to racing than he did to his practice. He could not make a living either at medicine, because of his neglect, or at racing, which was a sheer gamble, and had to resort to other and criminal means to obtain money to keep himself in the luxury which he regarded as a necessity. It seemed to Palmer that the simplest way to raise money was to insure his relatives and then poison them. This he proceeded to do, and was completely successful, but when his stock of relations ran out, his immunity ended. An intimate friend had won a large sum of money on the racecourse, and to get this Palmer murdered him. This crime was his undoing. He was arrested, tried at the Old Bailey in 1856, and sentenced to death. One of the witnesses at the trial was a young man named George Herring, who had acted for Palmer as a go-be-tween with the bookmakers to whom the murdering doctor owed money. Herring had no means and but little education, but the sight of the welleducated polished doctor in the dock at the Old Bailey and his ignominious fate had such an effect upon him that he took a vow never to depart from the straight line of honesty. Mr Herring stuck to his vow, and throughout his career as a racecourse tout, bookmaker, and city financier, there was never a moment when a finger of suspicion could have been turned his way. Everything he touched turned to gold. It is rumoured that he retired from the turf worth £IOO,OOO. and in ten years in the city turned that sum into over a million, and this despite his generous gifts to charities and to the long list of pensioners and hangers-on who fed from his bounty. In his will Mr Herring left practically the whole of his fortune to the Salvation Army.