The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

CHAPTER XXI. SAVINGS-BANK CURIOSITIES. With persons who deposit their hard-earned savings in the Post-office Savings Bank, there is sometimes observed a disposition, not to be wondered at in their case, to use more than ordinary care in keeping their savings secret,--which care, however, does not always secure the aim which they have in view, but results in quite a different fashion. A domestic servant who had invested in a Trustee Savings Bank about L100, entered the holy bonds of matrimony in 1826, when it might have been expected she would be ready to admit the man of her choice to a knowledge of her monetary worth; but instead of doing so, she concealed this matter from him, and he remained ignorant of it throughout the remainder of his life. The sum at her credit in the Trustee Savings Bank was afterwards transferred to the Post-office Savings Bank, and by dint of saving she added to that amount nearly L50 more. At length, in 1862, after thirty-six years of married life, she died, leaving her husband with three children, but without revealing what she had so jealously guarded, in the interest, no doubt, of her children. Not many months thereafter the man married again. The second wife seems by some means to have come to a knowledge of her predecessor's savings, and in order to pave the way to future possession, prevailed upon the old man to make a will in her favour, which he consented to do, not knowing that he was worth anything, and thus gratified a whim, as he might suppose, at small cost. The effect of this was, that, when the old man died, the second wife obtained the whole amount of the account, while the poor children, whose mother had kept her secret so many years in their interest, derived no benefit whatever from the savings which she had hoped to leave them.