SECRET HOARDS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 40, 17 February 1932, Page 14

SECRET HOARDS

IN ODD CORNERS

LUCK^iFINDERS; '

People who keep their savings ,in Stockings or other hiding places aro causing considerable worry to bankers and Governments at present, for hoarding, often prevalent in times of depression, slows up the wheels of trade, says the "New York Times."Hoarded money is often kept in strange places. A retired English mill land who finally decided to.entrust his savings to a bank, a while ago, confessed that he had kept them in a Stuffed bird. Sometimes people forget where the hoard is hidden or else forget they ever had ono. A few months ago an art connoisseur, Alcide Demerelli, who lives in Ventimiglia, on the FrancoItalian frontier, noticed that one of his picture frames needed renovating. He took the picture down, the frame broke, and a cascade of gold coins fell to the floor. Somebody's long lost hoard had come to light. M. Demerelli was richer by 4000 gold coins of the reign of Napoleon I. j Similar cases have been known in: England. Four hundred pounds in treasury notes were found fastened round a water pipe in a Liverpool man's house last-winter. The previous tenant lad used his spare cash to prevent his pipes from freezing, and had later forgotten all abont it. Even more unusual was the way in , which a fortune of £3000 was rcdis-1 covered. The owner, a woman, who had inherited a house from her father, swatted" a fly one day with extra I vigour, and made a hole in the wooden ! ranclling of the wall. Inside- lay tho ' money. I .There are" drawbacks to using such niding places, particularly if notes and not coins have been saved. Weather and rats and mice can destroy a fortune if the saver is not careful. An old Irish, woman of County Donegal recently learned this to her cost. On he? birthday she went to her "home safe" to count her-savings, and was horrified to find that they"were feathering the nest of a rat that had bitten her £200 to shreds. Another hoarder, an English woman, hid her fortune so thoroughly in all sorts of places in her home that after her death her house had to be pulled flown before the heir could collect his inheritance.