EXTRAORDINARY WILL CASE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5396, 13 July 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

EXTRAORDINARY WILL CASE.

When the latest Australian mails loft the old country, an extraordinary will case was in course of trial in Dublin. Mrs.-Neville Bagot, a daughter of. the late Sir W. Vei’ner, seeks to set aside the will of her, husband,, oh [the ground that at the- time ' it 1 was /made ho was unduly ‘controlled by,'/his brothers, to whom the bulk of his fortune was left,' Tlie defence is*that-Mrs. Bagot’s conduct was; such that her husband lost 1 his ' Affection J for her.. The....husband, .Christopher- Neville, Bagot, went, to SouthrAustralia in .1844, and returned a wealthy man between 1860 and 1870. He*purchased an .estate .in Galw s ay',f° r £105,000, and the’rental is now £6OOO per annum. Ho -went through many adventures abroad, and after his return he vfas thrown from his howo while hunting in England, aud sustained injury to his spine,, which was the principle cause of his ultimately becoming paralysed from tho hips. In London hb liyed at’ the Alexandra Hotel, and ;was known! by, tho name of.. “The Nugget” iu tho “fabt”' society of Miss Verner and her family, the, two Misses Verner and their friends sometimes paid him midnight visits at his hotel for the purpose of having a jovial sapper, and some, extraordinary letters 1 were, read in Court relating to these matters.' A marriage between Miss Verner and Mr. Bagot was tat length ar-. ranged, and Miss Verner drew up A’.'list; of measurements of her features, body, and limbs, which was read in Court, and was not of a very delicate character. ( At his instance Sho promised in writing , to give up her fast and tipsy acquaintances and lovers and to overlook his shorbeomings, and he oil his part; premised to devote his life to rendering her happy. She was but twenty-two at this time, and ho was nearly fifty/aijd broken’down by paralysis. /lea weeks after the' marriage 'a ,s6n‘ 'was bohi, which Mr. Bagot declared not to bo his, ? By the will the bulk of his fortune, yvp&z left to his brothers ia succession, in order to keep the name and estates [of Bagot together; but [an annuity was loft to the cuild, together with £10,009 when he should reach thirty years of age; aud by a deed of separation an! annuity of £IOOO a year: had already been settled on hia wife; Mr. Bernard W. Bagot, brother of the testator, deposed to conversations with the

testator, in which-the latter stated that he would never have ' married but that Mrs. ; Bagot professed the greatest love and affection for him; that she us id to spend sixteen hours with him out of' the twenty-four at the hotel, and that she said all she wanted was to take care of him aud nurse him/ He said he was afraid it was a rash act:, *as he had heard that the Verners were a very irregular family. . He said Lady Verner was a woman of desperately wicked passions,- that she add ; her husband used to. fight fiercely, that she used to drink, and in her temper would tear the diamonds out of her hair and fling them into the fire, and break the furniture, and that when her husband was dying she took the family away and left him to die like a dog; that on one occasion when he was dining there—a birthday dinner of Six* William, the present bai*onet—a fight arose between the gentlemen, and Lord Macdonald was knocked under the table; and Lady Verner came downstairs and asked ..what infernal orgies were these. Sir William thereupon said he would throw his mother out of the window if she did not leave the room. This occuiTed at 85 Eaton-square, London, and Sir William asked the testator's permission to take his guests over to the Alexandra Hotel, where the testator was staying, and finish up the evening thex-e. : He consented, and the raori went to the hotel, oho of the’girls going'with them, and Miss Edith, after putting her mother to bed with tho. “Frenchman,” as she called the brandy bottle, and kissing her as if she herself were going to bed, followed them, and was at the hotel twenty minutes after them. It was a joke among them that her mother was gone to bed 'with the Frenchman. The thought of creating dissension between Mr. aud Mrs. Bagot never entered the witness’s head. At Tunbridge Wells also the testator compla'ned that Miss Edith Verner was setting her sister, “Mrs. Bagot,” a’very bad example; that they’spent their nights at improper places, going about town with improper companions; that in London they wore in the habit of frequenting the Burlington Arcade, where perSoQs.were in the habit of meeting to make assignations; and that on one occasion, when Colonel Pakenham found them there and brought theni home, Mrs. Bagot said that her bootmaker lived there. He told the witness also , that. she had called tho child (Mrs. Bagot’s) a cuck-io. She subsequently changed the name to Booboo. .- They had a fight on their way to Brussels because she insisted on having her big dog in a carriage with her! He also complained to the witness about a bill that came to him for wines and spirits and other things sent to 86 Eaton-square, at a time when she was living in his hotel from morning till night. She said that “Billy (Sir William Vexmer) had gob the things,”. But at the time Billy was in Australia.. He further complained of having had to. pay a bill of £7OO for two and a-half years’ support of Lady Verner’s daughter, while Lady Verner charged him £3O for having stayed two or three-days in her house at Eaton-square while the family wci-q absent although he paid the servants. On one occasion she said,' “There ho is groaning in there, the old cripple ; I wonder what he is left living for. I wish he was- dead. I could poison him.” On one occasion he said, “.That girl (xtxeaning Miss: Edith Verner) is the blight of my happiness. I hope she will never darkeamy door agaux.” ’He also said to Sir William,, “ You remember when we were at Nice -we went over to Menbona, aud the girlsweufc to a hell thex-e, and I could not get them away. They were playing with a lot of Italians and. other foreigners, and they came .home wUh a parcel of drunken'foreigue-s at four o’clock in the morning. * A hew auddmportant feature of the case is that Mr. Fry, of Dublin, solicitor, who acted for Mr. Bagot, admitted having framed a case for counsel to justify au application for judicial separation, in which the testator required him to state that Mrs. Bagot previous to marriage had been improperly intimate with him, and her conduct was subsequently bad ; but he said Mr. Bernard’Bagot also had a share in the preparation! of the document, and Mrs. Bagot’s solicitor had nob been communicated with when these proceedings commenced. —Sydney Mail, June 29. ■ ’