The "Bagot Will Case," which has excited much interest in
Ireland, ended on Tuesday in a verdict for the plaintiff, Mrs. Neville Bagot, whose case was that her deceased husband, a rich Australian squatter, had made his will under an illusion that her only child was not his own, and had therefore disinherited him. She maintained that the child was his, that she had originally been deceived by a mock marriage, but that she had been faithful to Mr. Begot, and that a legal marriage had been performed ten weeks before the child was born. On the other hand, the de- fendant, John Bagot, principal legatee under the will, contended that Mrs. Bagot, formerly Alice Verner, a girl of excellent family and position, was a dissolute adventuress, who had palmed off the child of some doctor.at Nice upon Neville Begot, and had invented the mock marriage, and had been properly punished when he discovered the will. A vast quantity of very dirty evidence was produced, but it was shown elearly that though there might be doubts about the mock marriage—Mrs. Neville Begot admitting in the witness-box that " she would tell lies in an emergency "—Neville Begot certainly believed the child to be his, that he said so in writing, and that the child
was unusually like him. The Judge therefore charged against the will, the jury agreed, and the child inherits. The verdict seems just on the evidence, and may give this pleasure, that the child who gets the money is the only person in the case who comes out of it without a smudge. There is, it is said, to be an application for a new trial ; but as the presumption of law is strongly in favour of the child, "marriage demonstrating paternity" till it is disproved, the evidence of likeness will probably remain irresistible.
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