The Miser Of Mile End

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 201, 26 August 1939, Page 8

The Miser Of Mile End

P)OR Mr. Doddemead," an East End retired postal porker, who "lived on crusts and died in a public institution, bequeathed an estate amounting to thousands of pounds. Astonishing details about the life, death and fortune of this remarkable character came to light when his ■tory was revealed by a London Sunday newspaper.

Fifty-piglit-year-old Thomas Doddemead, who never earned more than £5 • week from the Post Office, has already been discovered to have had over £0000 on deposit at one . bank, and it is antipa ted that further hidden hoard will be located soon.

"The lliser of Mile End" left a will, which his landlady, Mrs. MacGuire, of Mile End, found hidden away in a corner of his shabby room.

It nominated as co-executors the senior partner of Messrs. Stone and Stone, solicitors, and the Public Trustee.

Doddemead died in the L.C.C. Hospital, Mile Knd, with all the outward appearances of a pauper, but Mr. Stone remembered that some years a go ho had Acted as his solicitor in the sale of a small house at Leytonstone, and had been told to forward the proceeds of the ■ale to the Midland Bank.

So he made inquiries at the bank which revealed that the "pauper" had £0000 on deposit.

DoddemeadVi will makes continual reference to jewellery, and it is felt that somewhere an accumulation of jewellery lien hidden as effectively as the £0000, of which Doddemead never spoke. The search jroe« on.

Doddemead never married, and his only surviving relative is a sister who has been conllned in a ptiblia institution for many years.

In his will lie bequeathed on trust to hi* winter everything he possessed when lie <liecl. On her tleatli. the estate is to I>n«s to the Society of Friends. fortune T the ° rigin of DfKWl ' lnoacl ' a

2i ved near him Mile End regarded Win it a man of fabuloua wealth. Whispers of lik riches

passed up and down tic streets as he took his mysterious nightly walks through the neighbourhood. Everybody knew him by eight, though he spoke to no one. He' never bought newspapers, never spent money on amusements, never had a fire in his room. He loved smoking, but would buy only half an ounce of tobacco a week. "Nobody could claim to have known Doddemead —least of all the people with whom he worked," a representative of Messrs. Stone and Stone remarked.

"He came to us first some years ago in connection with the sale of property. He was meticulous in his dealings, and after the final settlement had been reached and the documents sent to him, he came to our office and pointed out a discrepancy of threepence in one of the rate demands. Harmless Eccentric "We regarded him as a harmless eccentric. "He despised people who spent money on newspapers, just as he despised those who paid money for travel. "He obtained his news from the scraps of paper in which he carried home pieces of fish or bread, which he bought in one of Mile End's markets. "Doddemead had a complex about saving, and an obvious fear that someone would discover something about him. Time after time, when he was «o ill that only the hospital could save him, 1 implored him to go there. "He fought against the idea until the last. One could not help feeling he wa* afraid."

Doddemead inherited his name from' his Huguenot ancestors. His parent* lived in Stepney, East, and he began work as a telegraph messenger at the age of 14. In due course, he became a postman, and eventually a sorter. Latterly he had had a Post Office pension of £2 9/0 a week.

Several years ago he bought a house in Leytonstone, and lived by himself.

"Doddemead was a strange man," one of his neighbours told Pressmen. "He would speak to nobody. My children were afraid of him.

"We would see him come home from work in the evening carrying newspaper parcels. No tradesmen ever called with supplies, and the front steps were never washed. "Late at night he would go out and. at times we would hear him open his front door at three or four o'clock in the morning. He would never even reply if you wished him *Good morning.'" <S> r

When the house was sold and Doddeniead moved to his room in Mile Knd, it took a firm of builders several weeks to recondition the place. "I have never seen such squalor," declared one of the men who helped with the job. So it came about that when he went to his grave in the City of London Cemetery, Manor Park, Doddemead was followed only by his solicitor, who paid for the one wreath on his coffin. Somewhere a note has been found asking that he should be buried as near as possible to his mother, whose grave is in Manor Park Cemetery. Poor Mr. Doddemead. His death was as lonely as his life. t