IN 1875 a sensational paragraph appeared in most of the daily papers, announcing the death of “an old Mr. Attwood,” who was declared to have been a bachelor, and “the giver of all the anonymous £1,000 cheques.” It was further stated that he had given away £350,000 in this way—£45,000 within the last year; that he had died intestate, leaving a fortune of more than a million sterling, and that a thousand-pound note was found lying in his room as if it had been waste paper. The truth of the matter, as we are informed by a connection of the family, is this. Mr. Benjamin Attwood was a brother of Mr. Thomas Attwood, who was well known forty years ago as a leader of the Birmingham Political Union, and one of the first members for that borough. He was not a bachelor, but a widower, and the fortune which he has left is believed to be much less than the above-named sum, though its exact amount is not yet known. After making a competent fortune by his own industry, Mr. Attwood, some time ago, inherited enormous wealth from a nephew, the late Mr. Matthias Wolverley Attwood, M.P., and he determined to dispose of this accession to his income by giving it partly to his less prosperous kinsfolk, and partly to charitable associations. He would often call at a hospital or other benevolent institution, and leave £1,000, asking simply for an acknowledgment in the _Times_, and never allowing his name to be published. In this way he distributed larger sums than that mentioned in the original rumour. It would be wrong to regard Mr. Attwood as an eccentric man. His life was quiet, gentlemanlike, and unassuming, with no special peculiarities, and his only motive for secret almsgiving was the desire to do good in an unobtrusive manner. He was one of those truly charitable men who loved to do good without letting his left hand know what his right hand did, and he would probably have been better pleased had his secret been kept after his death as well as it was during his life.