This will is taken from a volume published for county circulation by Philip John Budworth, M.A., J.P., and D.L., for the county of Essex, and entitled, “Memorials of the Parishes of Greensted--Budworth, Chipping Ongar, and High Laver.”
A wealthy individual of Brussels, who died in July, 1824, ordered by his will that his body should be buried in the least expensive manner possible; and that the funeral service should be that known as “third-class;” but that the difference between this and a “first-class” funeral should be computed, and the sum laid out in a thousand loaves, to be distributed to the poor of his parish on the day of his funeral, and a plaquette (value 6-1/2 sous) to be given with each loaf.
In the Austrian capital, Vienna, the undertakers have most successfully introduced the custom of dressing up the dead in satins, laces, and flowers, supplying appropriate costumes for maids, brides, wives, widows, with couches _en suite_, and decorations for the chamber of death, which is brilliantly illuminated, while the corpse, with face painted in the hues of health, lies there raised on satin pillows to receive the visits of a crowd of friends. All is done with great expedition, for the law only allows a delay of twenty-four hours between the death and burial, and all this finery has to be removed after the family and friends have done looking at it, and to be replaced by such grave-clothes as the undertaker chooses to exchange for it beneath the coffin-lid.
A very singular will was opened, on the 8th of October, 1877, in the office of Maître Robillart, a notary of Paris. It was that of a Sieur Benoît, formerly residing at Rue des Gravillers, and lately deceased. The last clause of it was thus worded:
“I expressly and formally desire that my remains may be enclosed for burial in my large leather trunk, instead of putting my survivors to the expense of a coffin. I am attached to that trunk, which has gone round the world with me three times.”
Jeremy Bentham died in 1832. He was an English jurist, philosopher and writer of great ability. In his latter years he desired that his preserved figure might be placed in a chair at the banquet-table of his friends and disciples when they met on any great occasions of philosophy and philanthropy. He died, and his wish was carefully carried out by his favorite disciple, the late Dr. Southwood Smith, to whom he bequeathed his body in his will. Dressed in his usual clothes, wearing a gray broad-brimmed hat, and with his old hazel walking-stick, called Dapple (after a favorite old horse), the farmer-like figure of the benevolent philosopher sat in a large armchair, with a smiling, fresh-colored countenance, locked up in a mahogany case with a plate-glass front. This was his actual body preserved by some scientific process. A French artist made a wax mask. The real face was underneath it.