LONELY WOMAN’S MONEY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1186, 8 December 1924, Page 11

LONELY WOMAN’S MONEY.

NOTES ALL OVER TIIE HOUSE. TIIE COMPANY OF CATS. A strange story is told of an old ladynamed Miss Agnes Ramsay Clarke, who was lately taken to tlie Gravesend Infirmary in a semi-conscious condition, following a seizure. She was found lying in the garden of her residence, where, save for hie company of eats, she lived alone. The police afterwards found Alisa Clarke’s house a storehouse of money. Cold, silver, banknotes and Treasury notes were everywhere, to the total value of some thousands of pounds—there wore more than 500 sovereigns in a bug. In the underground kitchen the police tound bundles of Treasury notes tied in parcels banging on hooks in a wardrobe cupboard. Hidden among a quantity of lace and hosiery were more packets of notes. In a meat dish in tho kitchen were two bags, one containing halfcrowns and life other fiorins, amounting to nearly £IOO. In the bedroom under a mattress was a- bag containing several hundreds of sovereigns ahd half-sovereigns. IVrapped in an old handkerchief were Bank of England notes. A quantity of jewellery and plate wan also found. The police conveyed the money and valuables to the police station, where the tusk of counting the former took several hours.

The money, it is understood, was the savings from a quarterly allowance made lo Miss Clarke’s mother by tlie Keeper of tho German Royal Purse. Mrs Clarke, who, it is believed by local people who knew her, was u governess to the exKaiser, and his brothers and sisters, went to Gravesend when she retired with her daughter. Tho story is thut her daughter had been a playmate of tho German Royal children nearly 40 years ago. Although Airs Clarke’s allowance is believed ’to havo been large, she saved every penny, avoided expenditure on renovation, did not keep a servant, and lived in only part of tho house.

“The motive for Airs Clarke’s economy was her fear of death,” a former neighbour has explained. “Her allowance was to stop when she died, and she was apparently frightened about what would happen to her daughter when that occurred. This fear would account, perhaps, for her decision not to build a. chicken house when she started to keep fowls. She gave them the run of her drawing room for more than a year. 111 later yearn, when she started keeping pets, apparently for company, she kept them indoors.” The police found that in several of the rooms there were piles of branches of trees, which Aliss Clarke had evidently sawn down and brought in for tlie cats to climb up.