LONDON — On a Ping-Pong table in her North London garden lay Atalanta Georgopoulos’s last will and testament. She signed, and then backed a safe distance away. Up to the table strode her neighbor and his house cleaner, witnesses to the will, each with their own pens, the three of them trying not to make the completion of her will the very act that also kills her.

Countries around the world have scrambled to simplify the writing of wills in recent weeks, heeding the legions of people, young and old, for whom the messy aftermath of death has rushed into view. But England’s influential will-making traditions have stood still, defying the clamor of lawyers concerned that their and their clients’ health is being jeopardized by rules instituted in the first year of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837.

Across England, people are having to choreograph new rituals to satisfy the 180-year-old mandate that wills be signed in the presence of two witnesses — neither of them beneficiaries and, according to the prevailing interpretation, neither of them pixelated.

Will makers have executed drive-by signings and signings through nursing home windows. They have pinned documents under windshield wipers and dog bowls. They have discussed death and enumerated assets from opposite ends of their driveways.