A NOTABLE WILL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 201, 4 May 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

A NOTABLE WILL.

In 1797 there; died in London a merchant named Peter Thelmusson. of foreign extraction, who bequeathed £IOO- - to his wife and children, and the rest of his property, amounting to upwards of £OOO,OOO, 'to trustees, with instructions that the money was to be invested and the interest suffered to accumulate until his throe sons and all their sons should have died, when the entire property -was to be transferred to his eldest great-grandson. Tn the event of no such heir being alive, the accumulated property was to be appropriated to the reduction of the. National Debt. Many calculations were made as to the probable amount which the accumulations were likely to reach, and according to the lowest computation it was believed that the sum would, in seventy years, amount to £10,000,000. The family of the deceased disputed the validity' of the will, and some years were passed in litigation, the result being that the document was declared valid, but an act of Parliament was passed in ISBO rendering null and void all bequests for the purposes of accumulation for longer than twenty years after the testator's death. The last grandson of refer Thelusson died in 1850, fifty-nine years after the death of the author of the will. Prolonged litigation again ensued, and when, in 18r>0, the House of Lords decided that Charles Tlielnsson was the heir, the legal expenses and cost,- of maintenance were found to have swallowed up the whole of the accumulated profits, leaving to the heir a sum as nearly as possible equal to the original bequest.