FORTUNE AND MISERY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21326, 29 October 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

FORTUNE AND MISERY

SEQUEL TO BIG SWEEP PRIZE EMILIO SCALA RUNS AWAY FLOOD OF BEGGING LETTERS Life has become a burden, an intolerable burden, for Mr. Emilio Scala. Once ho was a happy Battersea coffee-house proprietor, but he won a fortune by drawing a ticket for Grakle in the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake last year, and has ever since been living in dread of the begging letters the postman brings. Mr. Scala has received letters from all over the country, says the Daily Express. It seems that every professional beggar, every gold-brick merchant, every one with a pet scheme for getting rich quickly, and every one with a hard-luck story has discovered his address and sent him an S.O.S. Lately, a shower of abusive and even threatening epistles have helped to swell his mail. Now Mr. Scala, the once gay and lighthearted Italian, with the care-free face and expansive smile, has become a man of gloom and has fled from his tormentors. With his wife and four children he has left his imposing " sweepstake" turreted mansion, on the crest a hill at' Honor Oak, and disappeared. Nobody, not even his relatives in London, or the two servants he left in charge of his home, laiows where he is or when he is likelv to return. ' , , , j On September 12 Mr. Scala telephoned to his brother-in-law in London arid told him he was going away. " Pietro, I can-

not stand it any longer," he said. "These letters are terrible. Every day the postman brings me a bigger pile. " I am 'fed up' opening letters from people asking me for money, for subscriptions for charities, telling me how to make money, how to invest it or how i ought to spend it. I am going away from England —I don't know where—to get away from those letters. Just keep an eye on the house and one of these days you. will hear from me." That same day, Pietro, the brother-in-law, stated that Emilio and his wife and children had gone. " I do not know where they are or when, if ever, they will return. It is quite possible that Emilio will decide to settle down in Italy. He left everything at the house just as it was. Gardeners were at work and carpenters making alterations inside the house. The servants told me Emilio just packed a few suitcases, said he was going away, and left. That is all I know. " We have had no word from Emilio, not even a postcard to say he had arrived anywhere. I expect he has gone to

Italy, but he may have gone to America for all I know. "Those letters just made him mad. lie could not stand it any more. When they first arrived he tried to answer them, but they came, more and more every day, so that he used to fling them all into a cupboard. " Emilio was afraid to destroy the letters without reading them for fear there would be some from Mends. Then he. thought of a trick. Ho told his relatives and friends to mark their letters in a certain way—l cannot tell you how—and he used to open only the letters with this mark. " tn this ,way Lmilio could correspond with his friends. Those begging letters have just spoiled his lifo. He used to be such a happy, jolly fellow, and always laughing. 3Sow he never laughs."

A message from Rome dated September 15 stated:—"Fleeing from the fame which, he says, has become a burden to him, Mr. Emilio Scala, the Irish Sweep winner, arrived lato last night' in his birthplace, the little town of Isola-del-Liri, near Frosinone. Mr. Scala arrived by car with hjs family and drove through the streets to his old family home. He spent the night with his brothers and sisters. This morning ho paid a visit to his mother's grave in the churchyard. " Mr. Scab's children say they are delighted with Italian sunshine, and would like to live permanently in Rome. Their father has announced his intention of leaving the children at school in Italy to learn Italian, which they hardly know at all."-