About a week afterwards, a decently-dressed elderly woman, named
Bond, made her appearance. She had just arrived outside the coach
from the environs of Carmarthen. Her story was that about fifty years
previously (1771), her sister left her and proceeded to London to
seek her fortune. They had never corresponded, but from the name and
description of the deceased, she had no doubt she was her sister, and
the money accordingly belonged to her. It had cost her nearly all the
money she could raise to come from Wales, fully satisfied of being
amply repaid for her trouble, but she met with the same fate as the
preceding applicant.
The next claimant was a sailor, who had just returned from the West
Indies, where he had been _moored_, he said, thirty-five years. He
had left in England two sisters named Bond: one was of very eccentric
manners, particularly for her love of money; the sailor declared that
he had frequently seen her make a meal off cat's meat. The above he
considered sufficient proof of his relationship. He insisted upon
entering a caveat against the claim of his Majesty, but acknowledging
that the King appeared to be the legal claimant, he swore he would go
and see his royal master, and ask him if he had any objection to share
the money with him!
It would be tedious to enumerate the persons who put in their claims
from various parts of the world; but the King's proctor stood first in
the Prerogative Court, and nothing had transpired to affect his right
in behalf of his Majesty.
The hut on Cambridge Heath wherein Mrs. Bond died was closed for some
time; at length it was announced to be let; but such was the anxiety
to get possession of it that the notice was removed. The number of
applications were, doubtless, made under the impression that hoards of
money were yet undiscovered in the hut.
The claimant most likely entitled to the property was a Mr. Bond, a
butcher, in Shoreditch, who traced out that he was second cousin to the
wealthy spinster, his grandfather having been the only brother of the
father of Mrs. Bond; and the only bar to his administering was that he
had not been able to ascertain the church where Mrs. Bond's father and
mother were married, a most essential point to prove the legitimacy
of Mrs. Sarah Bond. There were no fewer than eight caveats against the
administrator.
John Ward, the Hackney Miser.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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