WIDE GAP BETWEEN BROTHERS.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17124, 20 April 1921, Page 8

WIDE GAP BETWEEN BROTHERS.

"Have you no kinsmen to help youP'' was asked of a poor man who applied for relief in, Brussels a few days ago (says the London correspondent of the "New York World," on January. 25th). "My only brother died 160 years ago," answered .the applicant. _ . Amazing as was his statement, it proved to 'be true. , A still more extraordinary lapse of time between the birth of two brothers is recorded by Henry Bellenden-Ker, a well-known' English lawyer of the early nineteenth century. One of, the wit-, nesses in a probate action in which Beilenden-Ker was engaged was asked if ho had any brothers or sisters. He replied: "My only brother died 162, years ago." A murmur of incredulity ran through the court, yet documentary evidence was produced to confirm the old man's statement. His father had married at the age of 19, and ,by this, wife had a son who died in infancy. He married again at the age of 75, and had another son, the witness, who was 96 when he gave his evidence. The Fox family can show.a. remarkable record of this type. There were only two generations in the direct line of descent between Sir Stephen Fdx, who was born in 1627, and (so it is said) attended Charles 1. on the scaffold, and the third Earl of llchester, who died in 1858. Thus it happened that of two aunts of Charles Jame* Fox one, his father's, half-sister, died in 1653, and the other, Lady' Sarah Napiner, his mother's youngest sister, died in 1828. The Maude family'is another longlived line. Captain Francis Maude, R.N., was horn in 1798, and survived until 1886. His paternal grandfather was born in 1673, and his father, the first-Lord Hawarden, in 1729, the three generations covering 213 years. Lord Hawarden married in 1777, *for his third wife, a bride of 18, who died in 1851. There were thus 122 years between the birth of the husband and the death of his wife.