Unconventional Wills
BY BASSETT DIGBY.
SOME timeago there was litigation in the Probate Court in London over the validity of a will alleged to have been made by a Manchester Ship Canal pilot who had died at sea. It consisted of a few words scribbled with an in- delible pencil on a hen's egg, which has been " filed " at Somerset House. Over in California a petticoat was " filed " for probate. On its hem was the will of a wealthy Los Angeles man, Mr. George W. Hazeltine, who died in a private hospital in that city. It left two legacies of £2,000, and one of £100,000 to a grandniece.
Among wills preserved at Somerset House is one scratched faintly on an identity disc worn by a stoker named Skinner who lost his life in H.M.S. Indefatigable' at the battle of Jutland. Another strange will there is a scrap of parchment which shrank to one-tenth of its original size owing to prolonged exposure to sea water. It was on its way abroad when the ship sank, and not until some months later did a diver bring up the deed-box containing it.
Wills have been made on scraps of wood, the linings of hats, book covers and peeled-off strips of birch-bark (in the Canadian forests), and have been pronounced valid as long as the date and witnesses' signatures have been in order and unchallenged. It is noteworthy that wills written on curious substances are usually quite conventional in the nature of their bequests.
A pathetic interest attaches to the unconventional clauses- of many a last will and testament. Very often a testator, speaking from beyond the grave, cheerily bids his friends and relatives to " carry on " and not to sorrow. A Staffordshire testator recently bade his survivors see that his burial service be " as bright and short as possible," and that " rabbits be kept well down on the estate." A poor man in the East End wrote : " I direct that my executors are to have £1 each for a wet.' " A similar hospitable desire was also expressed more than a hundred years previously by Samuel Jeffery, purser of His Majesty's ship Amphion,' who left a most jovial will, specifying, in part : " To my friends, Jack Dalling, Joe Cape and Tom Boardman, the sum of £10 between them, to pay for a good dinner, which I wish them to have in remembrance of me, and request they will drink a speedy and safe passage to me to the other world. My rings, &c., to my brother, William Henry Jeffery, to do with them as his own saucy fancy may direct. Launch me overboard, in good deep water, with plenty of ballast."
Two murderers, electrocuted at Sing Sing prison, made wills providing for the purchase of tobacco to be given to such future occupants of the death cell as should be friendless and penniless. A very different spirit imbued another American who died at Detroit bequeathing to his wife, a Lancashire-born woman, " 25 cents on condition that she take rat-poison within an hour of the receipt of the bequest 1 " And a Clapham man named Davis, made a bequest to his wife in these terms : " To Mary Davis, daughter of Peter Delaport, the sum of 5s. which is sufficient to enable her to get drunk with, for the last time at my expense ; and I give the like sum of 5s. to Charles Peter, the son of the said Mary, whom I am reputed to be the father of ; but never had, or ever shall have, any reason to be."
No risk of proceedings for libel attaches to the publica- tion of this allegation, for it was made in the outspoken old days of one hundred and fifty years ago. It was then, too, that a disgruntled litigant got back in great style from the other bank of the Styx on a certain eminent barrister of the period. " I hereby direct my executors," wrote this John Aylett Stow, " to lay out five guineas in purchase of a picture of the viper biting the benevolent hand of the person who saved him from perishing in the snow, if the same can be bought for that money ; and that they do, in memory of me, present it to Edward Bearcroft, Esq., a King's Counsel, whereby he may have frequent opportunities of contemplating on it."
Wills vary enormously in length, more so than any other form of document in the world, legal, literary, or commercial. The pilot's egg-shell will consists of seven words. The will of Mrs. Frederica Cook, admitted to probate at Somerset House, contained 95,940 words, though it disposed of only £20,000. The writing of it, in four large gilt-edged books, bound in blue leather, had been her hobby for twenty years, and she spent some time every day at it. The county clerk of Evening Shade, Arkansas, was recently confronted with a baffling problem, in the shape of a bequest transferring 160 acres of land " To the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ."
A Nottinghamshire man, who died recently, leaving £87, bequeathed one halfpenny to a daughter and one farthing to a son. Mr. Charles Miller, a rich lawyer and sportsman of Toronto, left Jockey Club stock to a former Attorney-General of Ontario who was a bitter enemy of racecourse betting, and shares in a brewery to several zealous temperance advocates. A Warwickshire will left the well-to-do testator's cats and a cooking-stove to his cook and gave special instructions for the disposal of the saucepans and other kitchen utensils. A rich Welsh- man left instructions in his will that his widow should be provided with eight tons of coal and one ton of fire logs every year, in addition to certain funds in cash.
A Southborough woman bequeathed her air cushion and indiarubber hot water bottle to a nephew, and an elderly Brighton woman left a house to the manager of a local grocer's shop as a token of her appreciation of his unfailing courtesy to her. A rich Polish Jew in New York cut his daughter off with 50 dollars because she had refused, six years previously, to get up and shut a window for him.
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