PLAGUE OF RICHES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20851, 18 April 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

PLAGUE OF RICHES.

"SWEEP" WINNER'S WORRIES.

"DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION." Thousands of letters; hundreds of begging callers; a never-silent telephone; life a nightmare of interruption. All that because Mrs. Selina Thompson, proprietress of the Station Hotel, Worksop, England, won a £20,000 prize in the Irish National sweepstake on the Manchester November Handicap. The troubles that followed that win helped to drive Mrs. Thompson to Canada on a holiday to forget the disadvantage of being a sweepstake winner. A recent message from Halifax, Nova Scotia, reports that Mrs. Thompson had landed there from the liner Adriatic to escape fortune-hunters in England. " I was driven to distraction by the people who pestered me after my win in the Manchester November Handicap," said Mrs. Thompson, " and so I chose the opportunity of coming to Canada on a holiday to see my sister. I hope that when 1 go back home my sweepstake success will be forgotten." Mrs. Thompson travelled in the liner without her name being known, to save being worried on the voyage. Her name was omitted from the list of passengers. " No one can have any idea of what winning a big sweepstake prize means unless they have suffered it," said Mrs. Thompson's daughter Muriel to a representative of the Daily Express. "My mother slipped quietly away to Canada to be out of all the trouble.

" Life was almost impossible after mother's win. Wo were inundated with letters and callers. Everybody in England with something to sell or with some scheme which needed financing seemed to come to us, and then, in addition, there was the host of charitable applications. " Why, even my own wedding had to be postponed because of the publicity."