In the autumn of 1834 his death was represented as having occurred under peculiar circumstances at an English watering-place, and after a very full investigation, with the depositions of ten witnesses, who swore to their belief of his having been drowned, and of four additional, who proved his identity, the insurance offices agreed to pay the sum in the policies, under the stipulation that the money was to be repaid if it should be discovered that he was alive. Two years after his death was alleged to have happened, it was rumoured that he had been seen, and it soon became a matter of notoriety that he had visited his native place and had made himself known to one or two of his personal friends. The facts were not denied, and the various sums were repaid to the offices under the obligations granted by the parties who had received the money; but the offices allowed the surrender values of the policies as at the time of their being brought to an end. * * * * * At Berlin, on 24th November, 1848, the funeral ceremonial of the Catholic Church, amid a numerous circle of weeping friends and relatives, was performed over the remains of one Franz Thomatscheck, who, however, had taken care to insure his life, both in London and in Copenhagen; and who, strange as it may seem, was, in disguise, and impelled by a strange curiosity, watching the progress of his own funeral. On 29th September following, the public prosecutor, the police authorities, and the priest of the Catholic congregation, might be seen standing over the grave to superintend the disinterment of the coffin, the contents of which, when opened, proved to be heavy stones, rotten straw, and an old board. A surgeon had been bribed to attest the death; his brother had aided him in effecting his escape; his disconsolate widow had followed the departed; but the Austrian police, assisted by the telegraph, had thwarted all these movements by consigning the perpetrators of the fraud to the tender mercies of the justice they had violated. * * * * * In the eighteenth century a company was established, the chief feature in which was the omission of the clause which renders the policy void in the event of suicide. A man went and insured his life, securing the privilege of a free-dying Englishman, and then took the insurers to dine at a tavern to meet several other persons. After dinner he said to the underwriters, “Gentlemen, it is fit you should be acquainted with the company. These honest men are tradesmen, to whom I was in debt, without any means of paying but by your assistance, and now I am your humble servant.” He pulled out a pistol and shot himself. * * * * * That the clause which makes the policies of suicides void is not unnecessary, the following is an additional testimony:--