PEER'S POVERTY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23157, 1 October 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

PEER'S POVERTY

WAN OF MANY PARTS "HARUM SCARUM YOUTH" ONCE WORTH £23,000 A YEAR THOUGH his family estate was once worth £23,000 a year, Lord Haldon, who has died, aged 42, in Westminster Hospital, London, was dependent on 14s lid a week health insurance money. Collapsing on the steps of the hospital, he was operated upon for a gastric ulcer. Two days later he died. A bachelor, he was a soldier, flax farmer, clerk, engineer, furniture salesman, film actor and ship's cook before poverty compelled him to live in a sitting room in King's Cross Road, London. Title a Handicap He'found his title a handicap rather than an advantage in his search for work. Member of an old West Country family that once owned the greater part of Torquay, he succeeded to the. barony in 1933. His escapades as the Hon. Lawrence Edward Broomfield Palk had already attracted attention. He served as a captain in the Royal Engineers in Gallipoli, Egypt and Mesopotamia during the Great War, and his service left him a victim to the after-effects of malaria, sunstroke and dysentery. He went to Kenya at the end of the war, and followed various occupations, but was repatriated to England in 1921. Subsequently he was sentenced to short terms of imprisonment for thefts of goods and jewellery. "Not Moaning" When last January he was reported to bo living in poverty, he revealed that but of "the 14s lid health insurance money on which he was dependent lie paid 10s rent. "I have earned £2 10s in a good week, but I am not moaning," he declared. "I suppose I must put down my troubles to a harum-scarum youth. 1 have been living on two eggs and three pints of milk a day." < Lord Haldon was* the fourth baron, succeeding his father, who experienced tlic full effects of the financial reverses and other misfortunes that befell tho family. The new peer is the fourth baron s great-uncle. Colonel the Hon. Edward Arthur Palk, youngest ahd only surviving son of the first Lord Haldon. He is aged 84.