so.. interestingly this is what it all means:
not relief but relict, which means widow; Judah’s estate was valued at under £200; and the 3 dates given with an 'l' next to them mean letters that were sent to Esther the widow on those dates. Finally the reference ‘Lr. 2717/39 is to a letter received by the Stamp Office in 1839 (which sadly won't exist anymore), possibly in response to the last letter sent to the address at City Road.
So such is the nature of this sort of research, a rather long drawn out process of getting the death duty reveals not a lot. But of course in a sense the revealing of not a lot is significant in itself. It confirms that Esther moved after Judah's death, and I think we found her possibly elsewhere on a census, so that fits with that.
What I have now also discovered though is that Judah's nephew Edward was the original merchant who with Greverus Kleinwort set up the predecessor to Kleinwort Benson, when it was Kleinwort Cohen. He left a rather large fortune of £258,000, and no direct descendants to pass it on to as he didn't marry or have children as far as I have worked out. I have put in an order to view the will in Kew, so that should be interesting!
