The England and Wales National Probate Calendar, 1861-1941, published Wednesday by Ancestry.co.uk for the first time, revealed that Karl Marx died poor and that Charles Darwin left considerable property.
According to the records of some six million estates included in the probate calendar, Marx – who died in 1883, left his youngest daughter, Eleanor, a sum of $395 – or $36,000 in today's dollars.
Darwin, who died a year earlier than Marx, left an estate worth $232,000 – or the equivalent of $20.5 million dollars in 2010.
Explorer Ernest Shackleton died in 1922 and left $878, an amount equal to $31,600 today. According to the report on ancestry.co.uk, Shackleton lost his money on investments.
Until 1857, the Church of England had the power of probate – that is, legal authority to administer a person's estate after his or her death. After 1857, the responsibility moved to the government, which is why the official records date from 1861.
The records show that the average person's estate between 1861 and 1941 totaled $5363, although some left as little as $15.75. John Cadbury, founder of the UK chocolate giant, left a sweet memory behind – an estate equal to $6.6 million today.
And defying conventional wisdom that writing is no way to make a living, popular Victorian writers did quite nicely: Charles Dickens in 1871 left what would amount to $11.2 million in 2010; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left an amount equivalent to $4.7 million upon his death in 1931, and Lewis Carroll departed the world in 1898 leaving an estate worth $710,000.
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