DISPUTE OVER WILL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 716, 16 December 1933, Page 3

DISPUTE OVER WILL

("Post" Special Correspondent.)

WIDOWS DECLARATION LIFE UTTERLY RUINED BY UNiEXPLAINED INFLUENCE. OLD-FASH'IO'NED INFLUENCE;

London, November 3. "For years there seems to have been some influenee that I have never been able to understand. It has crushed me utterly, and ruined my life an dlost m& my boy." This statement was made in crossexamination in the Probate Division yesterday by Mrs. Sarah Mabel Reed, widow of Mr. Thomas Alfred Reed, consulting engineer and naval architect, Newquay, and formerly of Cardiff, whose two wills are the subject of dispute.

iMrs. Reed added: "I have never had any frivolity or any youth. I have been old all my days; always had an old-fashioned outlook on things, and have gone on steadily, without fluctuation." This was the fifth day of the action. Mr. Reed died in Octoher, 1931, at the age of 71, leaving about £79,000. Mrs. Reed, who was testator's second wife, sought to establish a will in her favour dated September 8, 1917, and to set aside a will of September 4, 1923. A Word of Love. Letters which Mrs. Reed wrote to her husband in August, 1925, were read. In one she said. "Although we have falkn short of happiness we may save something out of the ruins." Anotber ran: "Please let m& know whether you love me at all, or whether you want to see me any more. I have done nothing that is unforgiveable." iShe also said she could not keep up much longer against the nerve strain, and asked him to write her a word of love.

The President pointed out that ithere were four letters in five days, and asked what the trouble between them had been. Mrs. Reed replied that, apart from anxiety in connection with her daughter Sally's matrimonial affairs, testator had said he would be coming home in a few days, but he put off his his arrival. Another thing was that he was anxious to have a big celebration of their silver wedding tbat year, but she was so unhappy over the death of her son, and hsr daughter's affairs, that she could not put up with a lot of festive people. "A Hateful Memory." The President quoted from a letter written hy testator: "Our own 25 years is nothing but a hateful memory to you." In reply Mrs. Reed said: "I have no memory of any thing hateful as you suggest." Mrs. Rieed described an incident during a visit which she and her husband paid to Nimes in May, 1925. • One evening, she said, after they /had been to a bullfight he got into a frenzy and was in ,a state of whimpering and weeping. "He tried to drag me into a grove of orange trees in the square," she said. "He declared he could see his dead boy walking there. I refused to go."

Mr. Fortune read a letter in which Mr. Reed wrote of his wife, in July, 1925: "She is evide'ntly under the . malign influenee of her brother George, and has been trying, from the first, to get me to make her independent of me." "I never once asked him for anything," Mrs. Reed declared. The le'fter continued: "She has a dual nature, one good — 'but it is getting small er; and one damned had — • which is getting larger. But I still live in hopes that the good will get top dog ... I find she has hated my children from the start, and I am not sure she did not marry me for what sh'e could get." iMrs. Reed: I do not know how he ' got the idea, because I never hated any one. I did everything for the children as far as I was able. Praise of Soutkerners. Mr. Norman Birkett, K.C. (for the defence) suggested that, even before their marriage in 1900, Mrs. Reed was adopting a superior tone towards her husband, and quoted from a let.ted which she wrote to him in November, 1899. The passage read: "Although I may feel there are some ' points of character upon your side which do not please me I shall never ' reproach you with them as I do not ' feel you are responsible for them. I do think that, if there is one difference between Britishers, it is that the Southerner is as a rule and without doubt more refined than any other inhabitant of the British' Isles." "That," remarked Mr. Birkett, "was a nasty one for the man you were going to marry, who was a north countryman, wasn't it?" Mrs. Reed replied that, at the time, she was hoping to discuss the wh'ole ' situation with' him, and, if they could not agree upon it, she was going to

ask to be released from her engagej ment. It was a great effort to underj stand each other before marriage. Mr. Birkett quoted from a letter written hy Mr. Reed in- May, 1913: "Not only did you hurt me with your talk, but struck me with your hands that should only have caressed. I have borne it to breaking point." Mrs. Reed: Yes; I know he said it. Mr. Birkett said that in 1925 Mr. Reed wrote: "At times I have had my life threatened hy her, once with a carving knife." "It is a very wicked statement," Mrs. Reed declared. "It is all imaginary. It is some kind of stunt against j me."

"When a total stranger accosts me in the street and tells me he objects to my smoking (as a man did yesterday) I consider he is guilty of gross impertinence," wrote an indignant correspondent of a London daily, adding "I might just as justifiably tell him I object to the cut of ' the suit he is wearing. If people had always minded their own business and refrained from meddling with other people's the pages of the historian would make pleasanter reading." Hear, hear! Although tobacco cranks are growing scarcer every day there are still those who would gladly see smoking made a criminal offence. Yet tobacco can be as harmless as fresh air, provided it's good. If you find smoking is affecting heart or nerves your tobacco is at fault, and contains too much nieotine. The toasted New Zealand is the best. Almost free from nieotine — eliminated by the toastmg — all four brands, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold, and Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead) are not only delightful smoking but absolutely innoeuous.