FAMOUS MISERS

Waipa Post, Volume 41, Issue 3186, 9 August 1930, Page 7

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 £IOO,OOO, and it was- commonly said that she kept it only by starving herself to death. His uncle, Sir Hervey Elwes, lived on £IOO 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 enorm'ously as" a result of his shrewd methods. Latterly he covered the windows of his country house with paper to save having them re-glazed, and he rode his horses on the grass by the side of the road rather than wear out their shoes ion the metal. At his death he was found to be worth £850,000.

Another man whose miserly habits were the talk of his day was the late Marquess 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 longin his coat. 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 builder of South London, was responsible for the erection of numbers of fine residences in the 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 in his seventy-eighth year was £900,000 and it is recorded that by this time he had converted everything he possessed, save his scanty wardrobe, into cash. His customary diet was bread and milk, the milk being obtained in the form of 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 accepting 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. Vanbille sent for an apothecary to bleed him. The n/>othecary asked in advance a fee that 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 necessary amount of blood was let in one operation. M. Vanhille, misei : i7 to the last, agreed to this alternative, ana died as a result of it.