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Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 101, 30 April 1910, Page 10
BRWER’S £90,000 BEQUEST.
TOWN PENALISED FOR LOSS OF LICENCES.
Curious conditions are attached to a bequest of about £90,000 left to the town of Burnley by Mr. Edward Stocks Massey, of Bamford Hall, Rochdale, chairman of Massey’s Burnley Brewery Company, who died on 27th December, at the age of sixty. The gross value of the estate, says the Daily Mail, is £123,863.
The bequests include £6,800 for Manchester University and £1,000 for the Robinson Kay Home for Incurables, Walmersley, Bury. The residue, after provision for his widow and other bequests, is left on trust to be applied for the benefit of the inhabitants of Burnley as the corporation shall decide. The money is not to be used for the reduction of rates, but for the advancement of education, science, or art.
Mr. Massey set forth in a schedule a list, with valuations, of forty-four public houses and twelve off-license shops belonging to the company. He provided that should the licences of any of these houses between the date of the will-23rd April last-and his death be forfeited, an equivalent value should go to Manchester University. The values of the houses range from £55 to £5,500.
His reason for making this provision, he stated, was that if the license were lost through the conduct of the frequenters of the house, their action would cost the town a very considerable sum, while if it were lost through the action of a body of teetotal magistrates the town would be punished. A total abstainer, he declared, had no more right to compel a temperate man to abstain from drinking his particular beverage than a temperate man had a right to compel the total abstainer by force of law to drink it. He hoped that the first contingency would make the inhabitants of Burnley careful as their conduct.
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