Fortune in a Bottle
Don’t you love a good urban legend? The sewing machine business abounds with them.
Perhaps my favourite concerns the Singer family and, in particular Daisy Alexander, nee Singer, an heiress to $12,000,000 of Isaac Merritt Singer’s fortune.
The story has it that she was a tad eccentric and, instead of writing a will, she put a message in a bottle. The message bequeathed the finder her fortune. Being in London at the time she simply tossed the bottle into the Thames river and died from a stroke shortly after.
A little unlikely, I hear you say. Hold on, it gets better...
Twelve years later an out-of-work dishwasher named Jack Wurm is out walking on the beach at San Francisco, finds the bottle opens it and claims the cash.
Some versions have it that other family member contested the will and Jack had to settle for only $6,000,000 and $80,000 a year from stock dividends.
What’s great about urban legend is the way it grows and becomes authenticated over time.
We have un-named (there’s a surprise) oceanographic experts who declare that the bottle would have followed various tidal streams to end up on the North American coast exactly 12 years after being dropped in the Thames either by way of the Bering Straights or the Panama Canal.
The story has been grabbed by various religious groups as a basis for sermons on the “you can’t take it with you” theme.
When you’ve an idle few moments, do an internet search for “message in a bottle” and “Daisy Alexander”. Sift the evidence, enjoy the read and then come back to the real world. (GF)