SOME STRANGE WILLS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2359, 24 November 1921, Page 1

SOME STRANGE WILLS.

INTERESTING FORMS. LEG OF BED AS RECORD. Ail wills for which probate is granted in England are tiled in Somerset House, writes a solicitor in the Daily Mail. They can be inspected by the public on the payment of a fee. The only exception to the above rule applies to the wills of the King and Queen of England, which are kept in the records but are sealed. Almost every day the Principal Probate Registry Office has to deal with wills of original construction.

One of the most recent was the portrait of a pretty girl upon which the testator had simply written, “I leave all to her.” The legator, a soldier, had duly signed it, and affidavits of identity being forthcoming, the will was admitted to probate and filed in the archives of Somerset House. A quaint will, yet these same archives contain others just as fanciful, and some that are remarkable for their historical interest.

One in this collection, interesting from a medical point of view, was made by an unfortunate who died of the black plague that raged at one time in London. This will was placed in a bottle filled with spirits and then corked. A precaution, no doubt, to preserve His Majesty’s law officers, who would have subsequently to handle it in the course of their duties, Horn infection by the deadly bacilli. Another will is in shorthand. Considering its date, somewhere round the year 1700, this is not a little remarkable, for the well-known cypher invented by the famous Mr Pitman saw the light of day over a hundred years later. Luckily the testator had left a key, else the authorities would have been put to no little trouble to decipher it, for shorthand was unknown in those days.

A will salvaged from the bottom of the sea supplies the nautical interest. This will was recovered after a long period of immersion, and the only damage it rccejved' was in ilie way of shrinkage. It was made on parchment, and this, when fished up, was found to have shrunk to about a tenth its normal size.

Another quaint though cumbersome record is the leg of a fourposter bed. The will of a certain earl was hidden in a recess at the top of this leg, and as there was a dispute over the grant of probate, the leg and its large wooden castor had to be filed and kept as cvide/ice. Shakespeare’s will, with its remarkable signature; Nelson’s will written in a common exercise-book on the eve of Trafalgar, and which towards the conclusion contains these words, “The enemy are now in sight—,” a soldier’s will made in a block covered notebook through which a bullet had passed without making it illegible—these and many more go to make a collection that many a curio-hunter would give his soul to possess.