Astors

Seeking to prove that the late William Waldorf Astor, Viscount Astor was not expecting to die when he set up a $46,000,000 trust fund in the U. S. Aug. 15. 1919, two months before he died, Attorney John William Davis had Nurse Mary Louise Jeffreys read into the record in Federal District Court in Manhattan last week the Viscount's rules for longevity as penned in letters sent at the time of the trust fund to his grandson, then aged twelve.

"Drink plenty of wine from childhood on, spend a week with a barrel of oysters and a turkey, drink a bottle of champagne for luncheon, smoke all you want. My other rule for a long life is to kill my doctor."

If the jury finds that the late Viscount Astor did not set up the trust fund to defeat expected estate taxes, as the U. S. claims he did, but merely to escape feared Wartime British capital confiscations, the present Viscount Astor and Major John Jacob Astor, heirs, may recover $10,825,721 in estate taxes collected by the U. S. Government in 1922, plus interest raising the sum to over $20,000,000.

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