STRANGE REQUEST

Evening Star, Issue 23369, 12 September 1939, Page 8

STRANGE REQUEST

CHLOROFORM PUT IN HER COFFIN More than 60 years ago a dainty, lovely French girl, daughter of a Pari* merchant whose fortune vanished' ia the Franeo-Prussian War, travelled to England and settled in London. She was Marie Caroline Pauline Seguin. She was just 20 then, and at an impressionable age had suffered anxiety and hardship. The Russians ravaged her country; her magnificent chateau home was razed to the ground; her two brother* lost their lives at Sedan; her father was mined. She died at her home ia Marylebone in January, 1938, at the age of 84, and the other day her will, proved after legal complications, showed that bv years of thrift she wa* worth £lß,lOl. In her will she said she was » spinster, without near relations, of French nationality, a Roman Catholic, and earned my money through my own exertions as a teacher in London. _ Only six people were at her burial, and she had directed that one of her arteries was to be severed and an uncorked bottle of chloroform placed in the coffin. . , . . By her orders her flat was to be kept exactly as it was until her will wa* proved. This had been done for months. The rent has been paid, and every week the flat has been dusted. Soon it mil be relet, and all trace of a lonely uttl* old lady will have vanished. Written in her own handwriting /u years ago, her will now reveals that her little fortune, after £2,097 estate duty had been paid, has n most entirely to Roman Catholic chanties. welfare and missionary orgamsa-

The will was contested, but Mr Justice Langton, on May 9 last, pronounced for its force and validity, and probate has now been granted to il.® Bee W. J. Wood, who was Pnest-m-Charge of the Church of Our Eady, Lissen Grove, North-west London, a* the time of her death. The story of her life of self-sacnfic# was told to a ‘ Sunday , r .^ nnrter bv her friend. Mrs Elizabeth Ncv e-Lig'bt foot, who lives in the sam® block of flats in St. John’s Wood . “ For a time after her arrival m London all those long years ago, said Mrs Lightfoot, “ Mile. Segum stayed with friends. Then she qualified as a teacher of French at Queen s College, where she worked for sis months every remaining sis she spent in France with her widowed mother, and when the latter died she lived completely alone in an ascetieally furnished two-roomed flat in St. John s Mood for more than 40 years, rarely venturing out.”-