MILLIONAIRE’S WIDOW

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 June 1940, Page 12

MILLIONAIRE’S WIDOW

SPENT £5,000 YEAR ON CLOTHES The widow o£ a former millionaire, and Lady of two Welsh manors, told a representative of the Daily Mail, London, how it felt to “come down” from £SOCO-a-year “pin money” to having £5 a week to live on. She is Mrs. Margaret Clarke, recently remarried widow of Mr. Owen Williams, millionaire shipping magnate, who died in 1938.

Mrs. Clarke had appeared at Reading earlier in the day for a public examination in bankruptcy, her statement of affairs showing liabilities amounting to £661. Her assets were £lO. At one time, she stated, her husband made her an allowance of £5OOO a year. Now she was receiving an allowance of £5 a week from her parents. She had also been a temporary A.R.P. worker in London at £2 a week, but had to give this up because of ill-health. The Official Receiver, Mr. J. Bruce Simmons, suggested that Mrs. Clarke had been unable to adjust herself from the time she had been the wife of a millionaire to the time when she was living “from hand to mouth.” GUEST OF PRINCE Mrs. Clarke, interviewed at her small house in Chelsea, displayed several medallions she had won with her hunters at the Royal and other famous shows, and photographs of herself with Ranjitsinhji when she was the guest of the famous Indian cricket-jprince in Nawanagar. “Those are about the only mementoes I have left of the old days,” she said. “I still hold the manorial rights of two estates 1 in Glamorgan, but they’re not worth much. The properties were sold before my huSband died. “When I married, my husband agreed that I should spend up to £5OOO a year on myself. I spent every penny of that on clothes and furs and riding kit. Things like cars, and horses, and so on my husband paid for.

“When I was doing A.R.P. work at £2-a-week, in Westminster, I used to think of the days when we always' had four or five cars at Cross Ways, our lovely country home in Glamorgan. “I had my own team of hunters, which I showed and rode to the Glamorgan Hunt. My husband had a herd of Herefords valued at £lOO,OOO. Nowadays I do all my own housework. At Cross Ways we had about 12 indoor servants, as well as about eight gardeners, grooms, chauffeurs, and so on.

“It was a glorious carefree life while it lasted —but that wasn’t for many years. Mr. Williams was 30 years oldei* than I, and he was not interested in travelling or entertaining. In fact, apart from his business, he only seemed interested in his cattle. “Then he started to lose money in his shipping line. About 1926 I returned to him a £16,000 rope of pearls which he had given me. Later I gave up to him other jewellery and bonds, amounting altogether to about £30,000. All was lost.

“He ceased to support me in 1929, but I still had some jewellery left. “My husband gave me to understand that I would benefit from large insurance policies after his death. When he died,and his estate was valued at only £5, it was a great shock, but there it is. “Now I shall have to find some employment to keep me going.”