WALKER ESTATE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 149, 27 June 1938, Page 19

WALKER ESTATE

CLAIMS .TO £450,000 MORE THAN 600 SOME NOTABLE CONNECTIONS (From "The PMt's" Representative.) SYDNEY, June' 17. Although 800 . claims have been received for a share in the distributable portion of the £450,000 estate of the late Mr. Thomas Walker, additional claims arq still being received from England, South America, and New Zealand. Others have been made, from France and Norway, as well as from parts of Australia.

The first claims to be heard by the Master in Equity, are those in which the claimants claim to be in the fourth degree of blood relationship to the late Mr. Walker. Under the terms of Mr. Walker's will the fund now divisibl# has to be distributed on a basis which assumes that he lived as long as hi* daughter, Dame Eadith Walker. One of the important questions to be argued is whether the children of Mr. Walker's first cousins, once removed, who died before Dame Eadith, are entitled to the share their parents would have received had they survived. These claimants would be in the sixth degree of kinship.

Amcyig the claimants as cousins" are Lady Wilhelmiria Devonshire, wife of Sir James Devonshire, of Wimbledon, London, and Colonel Charles Lyon Sidey, of Weston-Patrick, Hants. Their mother, a daughter of James Walker, of Wallerawang (of which he was the original grantee), was a cousin of the mother of the Marchioness ol Abergavenny, who is also a claimant. Sir Thomas Bell, of Helensborough, County Dumbarton, claims through his mother, Jane Walker, a daughter of an uncle of Mr. Thomas Walker, who married Imrie Bell, at Calcutta. She was a niece of James Walker, of Wallerawang. • PROTRACTED INQUIRY POSSIBLE. The Marchioness of.- Abergavenny claims in the sixth degree of kinship. Her descent is from the late Mr. Thomas Walker's maternal grandparent. She Is a daughter of. Jane Elizabeth Waiker, whose father was 1 a brother of Mr. Walker's mother. . Though the "duration, of this inquiry can only be a matter of conjecture, and opinions on the subject vary considerably, there is little doubt that the Master will, be engaged for many weeks, possibly months, in- unravelling the relationships of this extensive family. . . An important factor in the case is the appearance of a number of claims to kinship in the fourth degree with the late Mr. Thomas Walker. These claimants may not number more than a score, but if one of them proved kinship,' 600 other claimants to kinship in the fifth or more remote degrees will be eliminated.-

It has been now suggested-on behalf of claimants that the parents of Thomas Walker- had eleven instead of seven children. Any person proving direct descent from a brother or a sister df Thomas Walker will establish kinship in the fourth degree.