CALM OF MAN WHO WON £30,000

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 256, 25 July 1936, Page 10

CALM OF MAN WHO WON £30,000

“Will Stick to Plastering” WENT ON WITH HIS WORK AS USUAL YESTERDAY Dominion Special Service. Dunedin, July 24. With not a penny in his pocket until he was paid his wages of 25/- to-day, Mr. Arthur Ernest T. Johnstone, tt plasterer’s labourer, left his work last evening. A few hours later he found that he was worth £37,340, his ticket in an Irish sweepstake having won first prize of £30,000. Although now perhaps the wealthiest twenty-one-year-old man iu Dunedin, Mr. Johnstone was at his work to-day hanging sheets of fibrous plaster iu a drying shed of his employers, and announced his intention of continuing to work at his trade. -

The winner of the Irish Free State sweepstakes, a lottery conducted on the same lines as Tattersails, for the benefit of the hospitals of Ireland, is a tali man who will be celebrating his twenty-second birthday next month. He came to Dunedin from Timaru four months ago, and after working for one plastering firm lost his position. He was out of work for nearly three weeks and only started work last Friday, being due to collect his first week’s wages to-day. He had not a penny in the world yesterday, and as he was unable to get into the city to have lunch at his boardinghouse he borrowed 6d. from a mate to buy something to eat. He received a telegram last night from a man in Timaru through whom he had bought the sweepstake ticket informing him of his marvellous stroke of fortune, and naturally he had a minor celebration.

At 6.15 a.m. to-day he visited the home of his sister, Mrs. Frame, of South Dunedin, and called out a greeting when he placed an article he had borrowed in the letter-box. Within an hour Mrs. Frame was reading the morning paper, when she was astounded to come across notice of the great luck which had befallen her young brother. Greatly excited she telephoned him at work to break the news, but it was not news to him. “I know all about it so keep it quiet,” he told her, but a win of £30,000 iu one stroke is not a piece of news that can be kept secret, and soon Mr. Johnstone’s workmates were, congratulating him. What amazed them was his calm and the psychology that permitted him to continue at his work. Mr. Johnstone did not ask for even the day off.

“I’ve been telling the boys that I was going to have a big win, but as usual they laughed,” he said to a reporter. “Now I have the laugh on them, as I might be able to advance them a loan now instead of my borrowing 6d. from them.” The winning ticket was bought through an agent at Timaru about five months ago. Mr. Johnstone had been taking tickets fairly regularly and his address was known to the agent, who wired him last night. He is well known at Timaru, about which town he had worked on farms. This was his first success in a lottery.

“I should have won the £30,000 prize before,” he remarked. Four years ago in Auckland he was offered two consecutive tickets iu the Irish sweepstake. lie bought one and wanted to buy the second. “However, I was talked out of it A syndicate of six men bought the other ticket and they divided £30,000. I have been hopeful that my turn would come.”

The prize of £30,000 will be added to by exchange when the draft is received by Mr. Johnstone. Tlie adverse exchange rate on London will mean an additional £7340 to the young man. “Farming and plastering are the only trades I know anything about,” said Mr. Johnstone when lie was asked if he had any plans for the investment of his new-found capital. “Farming is no good now, and I still have much to learn about plastering. I will stick at plastering. Why should I give up work? IVhat I learn now will probably come in very handy later on.” The windfall is particularly welcome to the young man, whose father, a master mariner, died when he was six years of age. His mother is now living at Invercargill, and Mrs. Frame remarked that she was happy to know that her brother would now be in a position to adequately provide for the mother who had brought up the family.