FORTUNES WON AND LOST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18753, 5 January 1923, Page 6

FORTUNES WON AND LOST

£15,000 MADE IX A BET. ROMAXTIC LIFE OF MAX KILLED IX HOTEL. A young man aged about 25 died in d'a -la tic circumstances in November in Scarborough Hotel. The man. who gave his name as Fitzsimmons, had just finished lunche m when three detectives called. They tol•iowed him upstairs, and on the way I'ltzeiminons produced a pistol. The detectivei made a dash for him and he fell Ino pistol went off, and the man was shot m the bodv. He died within a few minutes. At the inquest he was identified as Ermul Dver An open verdict was returned. Uio coroner remarking-that the history of Dyer's life would make splendid material for a novel, Dver was the son of a brewer’s employee living at Brighton. He elected to be an engineer, but Brighton could not satisfy the ambition which spurred him on. He turned to Australia, and 12 years ago, being thou 18, managed to secure a passage to Western Australia There he found that the South Seas called him, and shipping in a pearling schooner he found adventure m the rones Straits. Pearl-fisher, engineer, fruit farmer by turn, he amassed a' considerable fortune. Then came the war. Enlisting in the Australian Exneditionarv Force, he was > the Gallipoli landing and won the DC M. Badly wounded, he was sent to England ami discharged. Adventure still beckoned to him, and ho obtained a commission in the Royal Engineers. Ho got to France, only to be blown up by a mine, and was sent back to England A job was found him at the Gretna munition town. That was in 1916, and there lie met and married a young Scottish munition worker, Miss Annie Watson. When he was demobilised he found employment under the Disposals Board. Dver was now approaching the zenith o: bis luck. The early part of 1020 found him a civilian employee at a few pounds a wee*, with a hundred or two in the bank; nv midsummer ho was passing rich on £lo,oQu was the possessor of a fine country house a. Kenlev, in Surrey. „ jTia wife, Mra Annie Dyer, tells how tne change of fortune came about. “vVo were living a'- Harlesden in 1920. she told a reporter "when, on the night of the day on which’ the Lincolnshire Handicap was run mv husband came home and told me lie had win between £II.OOO and £15.000. He na.l nut the whole of the money he hod in the bank, his gratuity from the army, on Lirious, which had won the Lincolnshire Handican ut 1. . . i i ji •■He came here to Henley, bought the Welcomes, a large IC-rnomed house, witu four or five acres of ground, for somethi-'g over £SOOO, and started a training stahlo Ho had a largo number of horses sent to him, and employed It or 13 stable lads. A wealthy man placed a number of horses with urn, and ho went to Doncaster and spent bun dreds of pounds on yearlings for himself “Just then he could not seem to do arything wrong. Ho went to the Newmarket. October meeting, and every horse he baeke 1 won. He came home with thousands of pounds in his pocket “But. that luck could not laAt. Ills fnrx.uno changed with the destruction of our home hy fire in April. 1921 He was n Brighton and I was in Scotland, and (ho house was shut up. My husband claimed £12,090 from the insurance companies, which, resisted the claim. “Last July he flew to Paris, and later I joined him at Boulogne. We parted theta on’ the best of terms, and from that i> this I had not seen or heard from him.’’