WOMAN'S BROKEN HEALTH

Evening Star, Issue 21621, 17 January 1934, Page 10

WOMAN'S BROKEN HEALTH

SEQUEL TO A TRUST THOUSANDS OF “SCROUNGERS.” Mrs Emily Cantrell, a.retired[schoolmistress, lies seriously ill in Birmingham as the result of trying to distribute a fortune left by her dearest triend. Mrs Elizabeth Sheffield of Idgbaston, died in, August and left £62,000 to. her two executors, Colonel AVilliani Thomas Cox and Mrs Cantrell, to apportion in ' their discretion among many dear friends and their two selves.” Since the publication of tho will Mrs Cantrell has received thousands of begging letters, and the number of callers at her house has been so great that at times they have formed a qU Mrs Cantrell was so worried by these people that her health failed. The breaking point came a few weeks ago, when she collapsed under the strain. She lay in November, with a nurse in constant attendance; in the house where Mrs Elizabeth Sheffield died. . Colonel Cox dashed to Birmingham when he heard of Mrs Cantrell’s illness. “These begging letters and the scrounging callers have undoubtedly been the cause of Mrs Cantrell s illness,” he said. “ I have received more than a hundred letters a, day . from all kinds of

people, all of :whom have, one object in common—to get their hands on tho money was left for the specific purpose of being distributed among Mrs Sheffield’s friends. These do not number more than twenty, and were each mentioned by name to us before Mrs Sheffield died.”.