WORKING AT TUB

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 52, Issue 81, 15 January 1932, Page 8

WORKING AT TUB

RICH WOMAN’S TROUBLES. PAWNING OF JEWELLERY. An extraordinary story of a wealthy spinster, owner of racehorses and real estate, being forced to pawn her jewellery and slave at a wash-tub, was told to a .Sydney magistrate lately. Miss Ruby Jacques, of Haymarket, sought to have a non-paying tenant evicted from a house owned by her at Kensington. Depression and the Moratorium Act were blamed by. Miss Jacques for her plight. “In order to get out of my difficulty,” Miss Jacques said, “I took a residential of 40 rooms and did the whole of the washing. In conjunction with the residential I also started a hairdressing saloon, where the charges are only sixpence for a haircut and threepence for a .shake. The additional washing entailed by this shop I do myself, hut the business is not- paying. “Because of non-paying tenants and other setbacks, I have pawned jewellery worth £64 on two occasions to pay rates on my properties and also handed over my Government Savings Bank passbook, with a credit of £55, to adjust insurance policies.” On six cottages at Randwiek, although they were not encumbered Miss Jacques said she had been unable to raise a. cent to pay off overdue rates. One of her racehorses had cost 900 guineas. She thought her string oi gallopers was more of a burden than an asset. She recently tried to sell them by auction, only to find that she could not even give them away. “Of course,” said Miss Jacques to the magistrate “the judge at theraces is like you—his word is final!”

“Yes,” said the magistrate, “in about 99 cases out of a hundred his decisions are correct, too.” The 'tenant was ordered to vacate the premises after the. New Year.