£166,000 LEGACY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23761, 14 September 1940, Page 13

£166,000 LEGACY

BOADHAN'S FAMILY FATHER DIES IN AMERICA GREAT SURPRISE FOR WIFE [from our OWN correspondent] LONDON, August 15 . With her last shilling—all that she had left of the week's housekeeping money, a mother of seven sent a telegram to her soldier husband to tell him that he had inherited £166,000. "If it had been about £100," she told an interviewer, "we should hare been satisfied, but this has come as such a shock that I don't know what I am doing and I am worried out of my life." Her husband, Private Frederick Hills, 56, of the East Surrey Kegiment, got 24 hours' special leave and went home to King Street, Maidstone, Kent, to see his family. "But I'm not going to be any different," he said. "I'm not going to let money go to my head. Any 7 way, I have a job in the Army to finish off at the moment." Private Hills, a former roadman, has just inherited the money from his father, Mr. John Hills, former policeconstable of Maidstone, who died at his home in Dearborn, United States, in May. The rest of the fortune is to be divided between Mr. John Hills' other five children. "I was cooking the lunch for my family when the letter —it was from the British Consul in Michigan—was brought by the postman," his wife, Mrs. Alice Hills, 46, stated. "I collapsed when I read it. When I came to, I counted mv coppers to wire Fred. I found I had only just enough money in my purse to send the wire. Fred was granted 24 hours' leave to come home and sort things out. I knew that his family in America had some money, but I never dreamt it was so much. "It will be a godsend. We have never been what you would call well off. The most my husband earned as a roadman was £2 18s a week to keep our family of seven kiddies on." The youngest of Mrs. Hills' children is four—the eldest 26.

"Now I shall be able to get them some nice clothes," she said.