£3000 PRIZE IN ART UNION

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27201, 19 November 1953, Page 12

£3000 PRIZE IN ART UNION

AWARD TQ CLAIMANT IN CHRISTCHURCH SEQUEL TO DESTRUCTION OF TICKET (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, November 18. After a handwriting panel had scrutinised the claims of 90 other persons who claimed to have bought the winning ticket in the “Super Duper” Art Union, drawn in June, Mr Neil McArthur announced today that the £3OOO would be paid to Mrs K. R. S. Roberts,' of Christchurch. Mrs Roberts’s nbm de plume was “My Crown.” She lost the ticket she bought from a seller near the Christchurch . Chief Post Office.

“I was satisfied from the start that the ticket was hers.” said Mr McArthur, the art union organiser. “The writing on the butt was identical with her handwriting.” When Mr D. McCormick announced in Christchurch that he had sold the missing winning ticket, 90 other persons claimed to have bought tickets from him and written “My Crown” on the butt. “But,” said Mr McArthur, “there were no other ‘My Crown’ nom de plumes on any of the butts he sold.” Police and Internal Affairs Department officers, together with Mr McArthur, checked all the butts that Mr McCormick sold—between 200 and 300 books of eight tickets. Mr Roberts said yesterday that when the results of the art union were published, he and his son threw their tickets in the fire when they saw they had not won anything. Mrs Roberts had said that she, too, had not won anything, and threw her ticket into the fire also. “I asked her what nom de plume she had used on her ticket, and she said ‘My Crown,’ ” said Mr Roberts. “We. were never in doubt about it. After a month. handwriting experts visited mv wife and checked her writing, but there were 90 other claimants in Christchurch. It took a long time.” * Mr and Mrs Roberts, who came to New Zealand from Walds after World War I, intend to revisit Britain next year.