Some of the Strangest Wills Ever Made
Originally published in Pearson's Weekly (C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.) vol.1 #15 (01 Nov 1890).
There is more than a glimmer of common sense in a curious will which recently came before the courts. It was that of a clergyman in the South of England, who, impressed with the belief that women have something to learn in the matter of domestic duties, left a considerable sum of money to be applied to the training of girls "for the important positions of wives and housekeepers."
The particular system of training best adapted to such an end was not specified by the testator, but it was stipulated that simplicity and regularity should be fundamental rules in any scheme for the purpose that might be drawn up; and as an indication of what was wanted in this respect a certain line of conduct was laid down for all who should benefit from the will.
The pupils were to go to bed early and to be up betimes;—to retire not later than nine in winter and half-past nine in summer, and to leave their rooms not later than six in the latter season and seven in the former. As soon as they got up they were to throw open their windows and strip their beds.
Their meals were to be taken at regular intervals and to be limited to three a day, the diet to be mainly vegetarian. Lawn tennis, chess, bagatelle, and the like were to be regarded as proper amusements; but trashy novels were not to be read, and cards were not to be played, nor was there to be any dancing.
Nothing very exacting in all this, and the morality and the hygiene of the system are alike in its favour; but the will, unfortunately for the projected school for the training of English wives, was found to be defective in certain essential points, and the plan may be said to have fallen through with an order appointing an heir-at-law.
This, however, is not the only will which has made early rising an underlying principle. Many years ago a rich uncle—a Mr. Sergeant, of Leicester—finding that his nephews were fond of lying abed in the morning, and being desirous of getting them to break off the bad habit, stipulated that unless they got up at five o'clock in summer and at seven in winter, and continued to do so for a number of years, the first seven to the satisfaction of the executors, they were not to receive any share of his property. The nephews were to be excused in case of illness; but that there night be no shamming it was provided that the lost time should be made up when health returned.
A citizen of Strasburg, when a child, had twenty-five livres left him. The money lay untouched for rather
more than half a century, and it was then found to have increased to 500. Struck by the accumulative power of money, the citizen endeavoured to make others as sensible of the fact as he was himself; so he left the 500 livres to be invested in five portions, and he made the calculation that by the end of a century each portion would amount to 18,000 livres.
One portion was then to be spent in reclaiming a morass. Then another century was to elapse, and another portion--now grown to 1,700,000 livres—was to be applied to the foundation of eighty prizes for the encouragement of husbandry.
After a third. century, a third portion—estimated to have reached 220,000,000 livres—was to be applied to the erection of museums and libraries and the establishment of benefit societies from which the industrious poor could obtain loans without interest.
The fourth century was to find the original hundred livres of the fourth portion multiplied to thirty milliards, and this was then to form a grand fund from which to found model towns of a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants each.
Unable to discover any better purpose to which the enormous sum of 8,500 milliard he estimated growth of the fifth portion in five centuries—could be applied, the direction of the testator was that it should wipe off the National Debt of his own country, and that the balance should be applied to the reduction of our national incumbranoe, this last provision being an act of gratitude for Newton's "Universal Art of Arithmetic."
There have been cases in which the testator has paid regard neither to limits of time nor nationality in his bequests, as with one of the Nortons, of Southwick, who, without palaver or restriction, left all he had to be applied "unto the end of the world" for the relief of "the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the wounded, and such as are prisoners." In this will "the Members of the Houses of Parliament" were named as executors.
If there was less cosmopolitanism, there was equal benevolence and decided patriotism in the bequest of one Henry Barton, in 1434, of a number of houses and shops to be given to people to live in rent free "so long as they devoutly prayed for the wholesome estate of Henry VI., King of England, and his heirs, Kings of England, so long as they should live, and for the souls of the progenitors of the said King, and for the souls of the King and his heirs after their death."
A hatter in Medford, Massachusetts—Solomon Sanborn by name—imposed on his executors an extraordinary task. Sanborn left his body to the late Professor Agassiz and Oliver Wendell Holmes, to be by them made use of for anatomical research, but with the proviso that from his skin two drum-heads were to be made.
The one drum-head was to have inscribed on it Pope's "Universal Prayer;" on the other the "Declaration of Independence" was to be engrossed. The complete drum was to be presented to a drummer on condition that at sunrise, upon the 17th of June each year, he beat, or caused to be beat, upon the said drum-heads, at the base of the Bunker Hill Monument, the national air, "Yankee Doodle."
Crazy as was this bequest, there is more to say for it than for the disposition Dr. Ellerby, the Quaker, made of his body, directing that the lungs should go to one particular friend and the brains to another, with the threat that if they were not accepted, the ungrateful legatees would be haunted by him ever after.
Such absurdities are not, as a rule, attended to; but a good deal of trouble is sometimes taken to bury a person in strict accordance with testamentary injunctions. There is the case of the French justice, M. Halloin, who was so fond of going through life with as little trouble as possible, that he often heard cases as he lay in bed. Such inordinate laziness was resented, and the services of the justice were dispensed with.
So far from being aggrieved at this, M. Halloin welcomed his release for the greater opportunities of rest it brought to him, and to show how attached he was to his couch, he made a will directing that on his death he should be buried as he lay, bed and all, with his body comfortable tucked in. This request was actually carried out. A deep pit was dug, the bed and its occupant were carefully lowered into it, and then boards were laid over the bed, so that in the last sleep the judge might have no other weight upon him save the bedclothes.
Why it was that Shakespeare left his wife his 'second-best' bed has never been satisfactorily explained; but it was a better legacy than the single shilling another husband left his spouse, because the strength of Samson, the genius of Homer, the prudence of Augustus, the skill of Pyrrhus, the patience of Job, the subtlety of Hannibal, the vigilance of Hermogenes, would not suffice to tame the perversity of her character."
And even the shilling was to be preferred to the 500 guineas left in another case to the wife with the stipulation that she was not to receive any benefit from the money in life, but that it was to be expended in giving her a handsome funeral.
And what are we to think of the annuity of £50 bequeathed to the bell-ringers of Bath Abbey by Colonel Nash, provided they should ring muffled peels on each anniversary of his wedding, and, as a contrast, peals of jubilation on the anniversary of the day which relieved him from domestic tyranny and wretchedness?