WILL NOT FOUND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22616, 2 January 1937, Page 9

WILL NOT FOUND

LATE LADY HOUSTON FORTUNE PROBABLY £5,000,000 GENEROSITY EXTOLLED By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received January 1, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 31 A search among the late Lady Houston's documents has failed to reveal a will. A search was also made in Jersey, but no will has so far been discovered there. In the meantime the funeral arrangements are held up. Lady Houston contracted bronchitis and died in her sleep, apparently from heart failure. The newspapers give prominence to Lady Houston's generosity, notably in financing Britain's Schneider Cup victory in 1931, the Everest Air Expedition, and the payment of £1,500,000 for her husband's death duties as an "act of grace" because she claimed domicile in Jersey, which is outside <>the scope of the British law. Her ladyship in recent years lavished money on a garish weekly journal in which her own pen heaped vituperation on Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Ederi and Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald. She often added in a postscript as invitation to sue her for libel. As recently as December 10 Lady Houston charged Mr. Baldwin with driving King Edward from the country. It is revealed from her birth certiiicate that the deceased lady would have been 80 years old on April 8. This news surprised her friends, who thought she was between 65 and 70. She was the daughter of a South London warehouseman who removed to Hampstead where she grew up. Lady Houston, fascinating as a girl, never lost her love for the scene of her childhood. She distributed annually £2OOO among South London charities. (When the Duke of Windsor was Prince of Wales he visited Lady Houston at Bvron Cottage, Hampstead, where latterly she had resided. The legal advisers of the deceased millionairess are convinced that a will exists. It is believed that her fortune may be in the neighbourhood of £5.000.000. A week before her death Lady Houston gave a sum believed to be £30.000 to the Boy Scouts' Association toward the refitting and upkeep of the ship Discovery on condition that the gift was not disclosed until after her death.

The summit of Mount Everest was flown over on April 3, 1933, by the two machines of the Houston Expedition. The flight took exactly three hours and was for the purpose of making an aerial survey of the region. A heavy dust haze at the beginning prevented this, but when the machines were over the summit many photographs were taken. When the enterprise was~first planned it had seemed doomed to failure, as sufficient finances could not be obtained. Lady Houston, however, saved the situation. In a speech at Paisley in October, 1932, the chief pilot, Lord Clydesdale, said: "I feel that the people of this country do not yet realise what we owe to Lady Houston. She is making herself entirely responsible for the finance of the scheme. She., is doing so not in any way as a 'stunt' but for her patriotic love of Britain and what Britain stands for."