£420,000 LOST IN FOUR YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 136, 8 June 1907, Page 13

£420,000 LOST IN FOUR YEARS.

HO*W MR. PETER ROBI_SO"S*S SON SPENT HIS FORTUNE. Net to every young man is given the chance to run through a fortune »f £420,000 in four years; bnt how easily it can be done was eiisclosed in the London Bankruptcy Court at the end. of April, at the tirst meeting of ihe creditors of Mr. Edward Arthur Robinson, of Bruce Lodge. Epsom, son of the late Mr. Peter Robinson, the ■well-known draper. Tbe debtor furnished accounts showing debts fully secured, £430,340; unsecured debts, and contingent liabilities, £38,025, of which £.""0.0 are expected to rank. The ranking indebteeiness is stated at £21,292, and the assets e-onsist of an estimated surplus of £16.587 from securities, held by erreeiitors. The debtor estimates that at January I. 1303, he had a surplus of £420,000, and accounts for the loss of that sum and for his present deficiency of £4420 11/7 as follows: — Household expenses (wife and child £140,410 13 6 Amount covenanted under marriage settlement £200,000 0 0 Purchase of Bruce Lodge, Epsom £5,900 0 0 Cost of furnishing same £2,000 0 0 Interest paid and accrued on advances £43,724 13 5 Premiums paid on life policies £24,SSS 0 0 Law costs (estimated) £5,300 0 O Proofs of debt amounting to about £59.000 were dealth with. Mr H. L. Howeii, the Official Receiver, reported that the unsecured liabilities were shown as having been contracted between 1903 and the date of the receiving order, and were mainly in respect of money borrowed, interest, and costs. An adjournment of six mouths was suggested tn the interest of creditors, and with the view to a proposal from the trustees of the debtor's marriage settlement; but eventually a resolution was passed that the debtor be adjudged bankrupt. At the very opening cf his career Mr. Edward Robinson showed a desire for the style of life which has thus resulted in bankruptcy. Still fa his teens, when his father died, leaving a million sterling, he lived In a style befitting his prospective inheritance, and in celebration exf the double event 'of attaining his majority and of coming Into a fortune of £300.000, Mr. Edward Robinson, on September 18, 1902. entertained 60 of his friends and tradesmen to a magnificent banquet In the Trocadero Restaurant, whierh cost the host close upon £1000. Everything—viands, fralt, and flowers— was of the most expensive kind. Champagne was In abundance at over two guineas a magnum, and liqueur—ln the shape of ISIS branely— at half a crown a glass.