GENEROUS WOMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 153, 26 December 1936, Page 15

GENEROUS WOMAN

"MOST CHARITABLE IN

LONDON"

Social leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have lost one of their greatest allies in charitable works—Mrs. Wesley "Watson, aged 87, who has died in her huge rambling house in Cadogan Gardens; S.W., London, states the "Daily MaiL"

During three reigns Mayfair has known her as "the most charitable woman in London," but immensely rich and inexhaustibly generous as she was, she hated her good deeds to be talked about.

Mrs. Watson died with a notebook filled with names of charity organisations" at her bedside. Her body is to be taken on board the 50-000 ton German liner Europa to her native New York, where part of her vast wealth is derived from extensive properties in the Bronx district, nearly half of which she owned.

An account of her lifetime of generosity, of her secret patronage of young people whose families were too poor to educate them, of yearly gifts of £10,000 distributed among charities in England and the United States, was given to a "Daily Mail" reporter by Mrs. Charles Frederick Watson, jun., her niece by marriage.

"There is no computing the extent of my aunt's fortune—perhaps, in cash, it may be found to amount to one million dollars—£2oo,ooo," said Mrs. Watson.

"She had a large income from properties left by her father, a wealthy Englishman, William Watson, who went to New York in its early days and bought a huge farm estate which is now the crowded apartment-house district of the Bronx.

"My aunt married an English cousin, Mr. Wesley Watson, a wealthy widower. She then came to live in England, where she began her long association with British society.

"Her regular donations to charity amounted to never less than £10,000 a year. Often, in addition, she would make special gifts, such as the £5000 with which she not long ago financed a great ball for a hospital in which the ex-King, then Prince of Wales, was interested.

"She was a remarkable character, dressing in an old-fashioned way and preferring to wear inexpensive. little, bangles and chains rather than tho wonderful jewels she possessed.' *