WEALTH BRINGS—WHAT?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 2 December 1927, Page 3

WEALTH BRINGS—WHAT?

WINNERS OF FORTUNE

IN THE CALCUTTA SWEEP

Wliat becomes of the men and women who by a turn of Fortune’s wheel become the possessor’s of vast wealth, the people who, for example, make a fortune on the Calcutta Sweep? For a day or twor their names loom largely in the news, they bask reluctantly in tiro limelight, they are interviewed, they are cross-examined as to how 'they are going to spend the money that has come to them like a bolt from the blue—then they are completely forgotten—they vanish. Are they happy wjth their newly-ac-quired wealth? Are they' spending it to the best advantage? Last June, a dentist’s assistant named Kilpatrick, a man of forty, who has been a vaudeville artist, won over

£90,000 on the Calcutta Sweep. lie was Lien working in South Africa. Quietly Mr Kilpatrick took his money and returned inconspicuously to England, where he bought a home for himself and his father and mother.

On the other hand there was Captain T. A] Jones, a picturesque old sailor, who drew the Derby favourite, Humorist, in the sweep of 1921.

ORPHANAGE REJOICINGS

110 dabbl'd in Indian Exchange and cleaned up £SOOO. Tlien lie put. £20,000 into a. railway company, and stejpped out with another £5.'>,000. Living, a peaceful life in a beautiful country estate outside London, ho is said to have only one extravagance, and that is the purchase of a Calcutta Sweep ticket each year. James Cavew, a Liverpool merchant, had a chance on the 1925 Derby. He was 53 then, was married, but childless, and deeply interested in a. home, for girls at. Great. Crosby. One day Carew went to the orphanage. One of the girls found the sweep ticket in his pocket, and wanted to know what it was. Carew explained, and he smiled as he looked info the curious, eager eyes. “If I should win,” he said, “we’ll have the \biggest party ever, and I’ll adopt—oh, say, 300 of you.” lie was not particularly excited when lie heard his number was drawn at Calcutta, and during the race he was sitting at home smoking his pipe. But the orphans at Great Crosby believed be would win, and win he did. _ The night of the race., lie carried out his promise, and completed arrangements for the adoption of 300 little girls. Everyone wondered when little Miss Gwen Thomas, who had been, a stenographer in a Liverpool insurance office for many years, won the pool oil Lord Woolavingion’s Captain Cuttle in 1922. She had been earning £5 a week and contributing to the support of her mother.

SAME COTTAGE

For weeks Miss Thomas worked _ on as though nothing had happened. Then, one day, she resigned. She bought a pretty little cottage in North Wales, gave her mother one-sixth of her money, donated a good sum to hospitals and charities and settled down Lo helping poor mothers and children. Mrs Nellie Ford who won £30,000 in. the Gilev sweepstake of 1923, was a weaver in a, factory town. Site and her husband still live in the same cottage they have occupied for many years, the only addition to the furnishings at which is a large framed portrait of Papyrus in the parlour. The Derby victory of Papyrus likewise brought fortune to Captain Anthony Poole, who secured the first prize in the Calcutta Swep,stake.

Captain. Poole had gone into business in Zanzibar after the war. He utilised his winnings to launch out in Hast Africa and now has a. line estate near Nairobi.