SOME QUEER WILLS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 31, 30 October 1937, Page 15

SOME QUEER WILLS

Man Leaves Wife aRope

Some curious doeuments deposited in Somerset House, particular wills, were mentioned by Mr Arthur Ford In a recent B.B.O. address. "When a man makes his will, how his character comes out!" paid Mr. Ford. Men have been known to make their wills on the most extraordinary objects : ogg-shells; doors; coins; tablecloths; comic postearda and even cheese, and I assure you that if properly witnessed they would be perfectly valid, though I can see' even Somerset House drawing the line at filing a will on a piece of Gorgonzola. A few years ago a man left a hundred thousand pounds to the Zoo, on condition that his mother's picture was hung there — in the board-room. Four hundred pounds was left to a woman as long as she had a telephone in her house. Far- ! things seem popnlar, One testator left to two nephews six penny-worth of farthings each ; and a man left his wife o farthing to b© &ent in an unstamped en- ! veiope, because she called him a pig. One woman said in her will: Nothing shall come to my relatives from me hut a hag of sand to rub themselves i with.' !

"What about this one, from a rw»» way official's willr 'My estate would have been considerably larger but for my unfortunate marriage to ihe clevercsf known legal Daylight Eohber. My associations with this perambulating Viuegar Cruet I consider to have cosfc me over four hundred pounds.' "Another husband left a yard of rope to his wife, hoping she would %now best how to make use of it. So much for happy marriages. "The funeral directions in a will are sometimes unusual. One man wrote: •j have always had the reputation of being late for appointments. Make me ten minutes late for my funeral 1* And do you know that walking about England somewhere is a young man whose will is tattooed on his back, properiy witnessed. Heaven knows how he signed iti Perhaps the strangest will at Somerset Hous© js that xecorded on the identity dise of a sailor lost at the Battle of Jutland and whose hody wa* washed ashore. His last will and testament contained three thousand micro- . 3copig letter s." ■ tuni l n 1 1 1 n H >U1UAAAAAA^AAWWWWVWI/WW^