FABULOUS FEES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue V, 3 August 1895, Page 131

FABULOUS FEES.

It is stated on excellent authority that the late Sergeant Ballantine received /1,000 a da}- for going out to India to defend the late Gaekwar of Baroda, who was charged with attempting to poison Sir Robert Phayre, the then resident at the Gaekwar’s Court. This enormous sum was in addition to counsel’s expenses. Fabulous fees are reported to have been received by certain prominent American lawyers. Fight years ago one of them sent in a bill to the New York and Hudson River Railway Company for /’zo.ooo for six weeks of legal service rendered. The bi 1 was settled. The Bishop of London, a few mouths after he was appointed to his high position, became dissatisfied with certain arrangements m his palace at Fulham, and sent for an eminent architect to advise him as to the alterations that might be effected. The great man came, listened to all the prelate had to say, personally inspected the entire building, and gave his estimate of the probable cost of the renovation required. The

figure mentioned was far higher than the Bishop had anticipated, and he resolved, therefore, to abandon the project. But before the architect retired his lordship said to him :—* Perhaps you will be good enough to inform me now for how much I shall write out a cheque to repay you for the trouble you have taken ?’ ‘ I thank your lordship—a hundred guineas,’ was the unexpected and disconcerting reply. ‘ A hundred guineas, sir ?’ * Yes, my lord, that is my fee.’ ‘ But, sir, many of my curates do not receive so much for a whole year’s services.’ * That may be very true, my lord ; but you will remember that 1 happen to be a bishop in my profession.’ The cheque was at once written and handed to the architect-bishop, who bowed courteously and took his leave.

Medical fees usually range high, especially when it happens that both physician and patient occupy a high position, as the following examples prove. Millionaires, as a rule, are so generous with their physicians that a doctor might manage to rub along it he only had half-a-dozen such patients under his care. A well-known

millionaire recently paid his physician the munificent sum of / 15,000 for attending his daughter for a period of two months, in addition to which the doctor had a splendid suite of apartments placed at his disposal, and special servants to attend to his needs. Another millionaire paid his physician /iz.ogo to accompany him on a yachting excursion of six months’ duration, while a third fortunate doctor was awarded a fee of Z5OO for performing the operation of intubation, which occupied him about five minutes. A hundred pounds a minute is not such bad pay! Sir Andrew Clarke attended H.R.H. the Prince of Wales at Sandringham during an attack of typhoid fever, and received for his services during the four weeks he attended the sum of £ 10,000. The same illustrious physician once attended Mr Gladstone at Liverpool, and for one day’s services received / 1,000. The celebrated physician, Sir William Gull, once pocketed a thousand pounds for a special visit to a wealthy country patient. Some months ago Mr W. K. Vanderbilt, the American millionaire, requested his physician to accompany him upon a sea voyage for six weeks. The doctor hesitated, and remarked that his practice was worth to him /200 a week. The man of money said, * I will pay you /'z.ooo for the six weeks, and meet all other expenses.’ The offer was promptly accepted. It would seem as though the profession of dentist in some parts of India, especially in Hyderabad, is not wholly unremunerative. A year ago the Nizam of that province sent for a surgeon-dentist, who drew a couple of his offending molars, and then drew the respectable sum of eight thousand Government rupees as his reward. Perhaps the highest fee ever tendered for the smallest modicum of legal service was received by a United States lawyer about two years ago. He was about to enter his carriage to attend a concert one evening, when a well-dressed young man detained him by the arm, and enquired, in breathless tones: ‘ln which of the States is it lawful for cousins to marry ?’ ‘Kansas,’ shouted the legal luminary, rather more curtly than courteously, and drove off. He had wellnigh forgotten the incident when he afterwards received a letter containing a cheque for two hundred dollars for ‘ legal advice,’ signed ‘ Kansas.’ This was at the rare rate of one hundred dollars per syllable or more than thirty-three dollars a letter. When Edison was consulted by the company organised to bore the Niagara Tunnel, a few years since, he received the sum of eight thousand pounds as a fee in return for the indispensable service he rendered as a reliable expert in the science of electricity.