A STAUNCH JEW. LORD SWAYTHLING'S WILL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 91, 19 April 1911, Page 2

A STAUNCH JEW. LORD SWAYTHLING 'S WILL.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 10th March. All the bequests under the will of the celebrated Jewish financier, Lord Swaythling, are made conditional on the allegiance of the beneficiaries to the Jewish religion. There is a clause of general application, '"provided that they shall respectively at my death be professing the Jewish religion, and not be married to a person not professing the Jewish religion." In the event of any child coming under the ban of this clause, such child's disinheritance is not absolute, and he leaves to such child, instead of the share to which he or she would have been entitled, a life annuity of £100. In another part of the will he states : "I declare it to be my earnest wish, and solemn injunction, that no child of mine shall at any time, or under any circumstances, abandon the Jewish religion, or intermarry with a person not of the Jewish religion." These views on religion enter into a business arrangement with his son, Lionel, for he says that : "Having advanced to his son, the Hon. Lionel Samuel Montagu, £45,000 for his capital in the firm of A. Keyser and Co., he directed that his trustees should not require repayment of this sum, but should allow it to be taken on account of his son's share in his residuary estate," but only if "my said son shall at my death be professing the Jewish religion, and shall not be married to a person not professing the Jewish religion." "LIBERAL JUDAISM." His strong views upon orthodoxy find expression in the second codicil to his will, by which he directs that his daughters are to lose three-fourths of their interest if they infringe his views on the matter. This clause reads :— i "Whereas my daughters, the Hon. Marion Montagu and the Hon. Lilian Helen Montagu, have, contrary to my wishes! promoted and assisted a movement known ac 'Liberal Judaism,' of the objects of which I strongly disapprove : Now, I hereby declare that if, after my death, either of my said daughters shall, to the knowledge of my trustees, assist the said movement, or any other movement having _ the same or the like objecls, by a gift or gifts of money, whether directly or indirectly, my trustees may thenceforward in their absolute and uncontrolled discretion, withhold from such daughter such part or parts, not exceeding three-fourth parts, as they shall think proper, of . the income which, but for this provision, would b© payable to her in respect of her share in my residuary estate." The estate is sworn provisionally at £1,150,000.