PROFITABLE CLAIRVOYANCE .

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 129, 1 June 1926, Page 11

PROFITABLE CLAIRVOYANCE .

SYDNEY HAWKER'S FORTUNE,

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 12th March,

An extraordinary story of an illiterate woman who made a fortune out of clairvoyance and fortune-telling in Sydney was related to a judicial committee of the Privy Council. The case was an appeal by Mrs. Mary Scales from the judgment of the Supreme Court of New South Wales dismissing a claim which she had brought against tho executors of her late husband, George Scales, to property which she said was held in trust for her. The value of tho estate was £50,000, of which £32,000 consisted of real property. At the original trial the Judge found that the property held by Mr, Scales or. standing in his name at the time of his death represented money earned or saved by his wife, and the main question for decision on. the present appeal was whether the money was | handed to the husband "in the form of gifts or whether he received it as trustee or agent for his wife. The Courts below found that the money was given to tho husband. . Mrs. Scales was born in Tasmania. She was unablo to read and could only write her own name. She married in 1883 George Scales, a stonemason, who had emigrated from England, and who was at the time a widower with three children. For seven years tho couple lived, at Ashfleld, Canterbury, in a rough shed constructed by the husband, and then, for another ten years, in a house built by Mr. Scales. Down to 1897 Mrs. Scales carried on a laundry business and combined this with hawking honey and dealing in rags, bones, and bottles. Prom 1897 to 1913 she carrried on business in The Arcade, Sydnoy, first as a beauty specialist, and later as a clairvoyanto and fortuneteller, and as an exponent of faithhealing. The business was profitable, but was brought to <pn end in 1913 as the result of police action. She claimed to. have foretold the Great War at a seance in December, 1912. £12,000 DUG FROM GARDEN. Mr. G. Lawrence, for Mrs. Scales, said that she hid large sums of money accumulated from her occupations in the house and in the garden. "From the garden," said Mr. Lawrence, "she dug up £12,000 in gold. It weighed two hundredweight. This and other large sums were handed over to the husband for investment. Mrs. Scales left everything unreservedly in his hands, and trusted him implicitly to manage her affairs After her husband's death, Mrs. Scales said to her son, 'I would like to die one of the richest women in Sydney, and I have not got a possible hope of doing that without your father's monoy. All the money ought to have been left to me." The hearing was adjourned*