OLD GERMANS DEATH

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 102, 27 October 1914, Page 8

OLD GERMANS DEATH

LIVED ON FEW PENCE A DAY LEAVES A FORTUNE. (Br TELEGRAPH— PRESS ASSOCIATION.) AUCKLAND, This Day. After living for years the life of a recluse in a small two-roomed house almost entirely bare *of furniture and spending only a few pence daily for bare necessaries of life, there died in Auckland last week an old German named Theodus Oswald Lattorff, worth between twelve thousand and twenty thousand pounds. A tradesman called, and receiving no answer to his knock found Lattorff sitting in a chair holding a news-, paper in both hands, dead. Wh'en the Public Trust officials investigated his affairs they found ho had left a fortune. There was a good deal of loose money mv the house, and bank books showed that a day or two before his death Lattorf lodged in one of the city banks three separate amounts — one for £500, another for £1000, and a third for £1800, a total of £3300. There were also in a savings bank account deposits showing regular weekly payments to a total of £400, and in other banks his books showed he had investments aggregating £10.000. There are also documents indicating the ownership of various house properties in the city, while he is believed also to have owned farm property and to have money invested in real estate to a considerable amount ; also a large quantity of mining scrip. It is believed there are heirs to tho old man's wealth, a bank official having some time ago received a letter from a young lady in South Australia claiming to be a niece of Lattorf's asking for any information concerning her aged relative.