LAW CLERK’S SECRET FORTUNE

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 January 1938, Page 8

LAW CLERK’S SECRET FORTUNE

£20,000 FOR NATIONAL DEBT. LONDON, November 18. A legacy believed to be worth more than £20,000 lias been left for the reduction of the National Debt by a clerk to a firm of London solicitors. Warren, Murton, Foster and Swan, of Bloomsbury. '

The clerk, Mr Jonathan Michael Brown, died last week. He had been in the service of the firm for 76 years, and was its common law clerk. He was pensioned by the firm, but persisted in carrying on his work. He taxed his last bill of costs only recently, in an action -which had lasted ten years. The Taxing Master made a special point of complimenting him on it, and only a few shillings were taxed off. He was( at the office a day or two before he died. “Mr Brown -was so secretive,” a partner in the firm said, “that neither his age—he was believed to be approaching 90 —nor his address was known to rhe firm. Only when his landlady reported his death was it learnt where he had lived.” He was an eccentric character, and a familiar figure to those engaged in the Law in London. In the Bear Garden —where solicitors’ clerks con-, gregate at the Law Courts'—he was. known at! the “Green Man,” because; of the colour of his well-worn clothes.' He amassed his fortune’ —unknown to his employers—in gilt-edged securi-; ties and in house property. Apart from one legacy of £2,000, all his estate has been left towards reducing the National Debt.