Submitted To Operation To Obtain Fortune

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30534, 1 September 1964, Page 17

Submitted To Operation To Obtain Fortune

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, August 31. An often-married baronet, Sir Ronald Gunter, has revealed the price he paid to get his hand on a £750.000 fortune, says “The People.” He submitted to an operation which ensured that he was not only the third baronet of the line, but also the last. He had himself sterilised Once it was assured there would be no heir to the title, he was able to break the entail on his family’s huge estates. That was 10 years ago. Now the former racing motorist, racehorse owner and lavish entertainer says: “I’m broke again. All I have is £6l in premium bonds.”

The 60-year-old Sir Ronald Gunter says he is a direct descendant of a man who helped Charles II escape from the Roundheads after the battle of Worcester. He is living off his fourth wife’s modest private income in her country cottage at Sidlesham, Surrey, “The People” said. In 1953, he had been married three times and had squandered £500,000. “For some reason or other 1 found myself having to exist on a pittance of £5 a week," he said. “Then I discovered that if, as I had no sons, I submitted to this confounded operation, I could get my hands on the family fortune—disentailing the estate, the lawyers called it,” he said.