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posted by janrinok on Sunday September 04 2016, @03:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the lots-of-procreation dept.

On Oct. 31, 1926, Charles Vance Millar, a well-known and wealthy Canadian lawyer, died at age 73. Halloween was a fitting day for him to go; Millar loved practical jokes and spent far too much time doing silly things like dropping dollar bills on the sidewalk and then hiding to see who would pick them up. But that was just a warm-up. In death, Millar unleashed his biggest prank ever — a last will and testament that was basically a giant social experiment. By promising a vast sum of money to the Toronto family that could have the most babies in a 10-year period, Millar set off a race to give birth the moment he died.

Millar described his will as "necessarily uncommon and capricious" because he had "no dependents or near relations." What Millar lacked in heirs, though, he made up for in cash and property. In addition to his work as a lawyer, Millar amassed a net worth of more than $10 million (in today's Canadian dollars) through a series of investments, including the property that would eventually be used for the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, one of the busiest crossings between the United States and Canada. He wanted to give that wealth away.

But he wanted to do it in as roguish a way as possible. Millar started off by giving shares in a jockey club to gambling opponents and shares in a brewery to teetotalling religious leaders. Then he left his house in Jamaica to three men who hated one another, on the condition that they own it together. But those were just a prelude to the big finish. In clause 10, Millar revealed a biology and math challenge that would change the lives of dozens of Toronto families. The remainder of his fortune — about $9 million — would be bequeathed a decade later to "the mother who has since my death given birth in Toronto to the greatest number of children as shown by the registrations under the Vital Statistics Act." If there were a tie, he wanted his fortune to be divided equally among the winners.

[...] Of course, there's a shortcut to having lots of babies — have more of them at once. Nadya Suleman, for example, had 14 kids (including one set of octuplets) in just nine years, from 2001 to 2009, using in vitro fertilization. Back in the 1930s, though, there was no IVF and no Clomid or other fertility-increasing drugs. That meant that not only were there no chemical ways to increase the odds of getting pregnant, but women also were less likely to have twins (or triplets) than women are today. Based on pictures and newspaper articles from the time, very few of the Derby contenders appeared to have had multiple births.

And the winners are pictured here.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @03:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @03:03PM (#397404)

    > Apparently, his entire will was meant to be a lesson in greed.
    > So he was a real asshole wanting to teach the rest of us.

    ¡Yay! for the self-righteous hubris of the rich looking to teach the poor a harsh lesson.