RICH MYSTERY CHILD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19218, 8 July 1924, Page 4

RICH MYSTERY CHILD.

ADOPTED GIRL’S ROMANCE STORY OF £24,000 LEGACY. CLAIM BY TWO SERVANTS. "Hilda, tbs mystery child,” might uers* ns the title of a real life story unfolded before tho First Paris Appeal Court last month. This affair started, of course (says the Daily Chronicle’s correspondent) with a sentimental prologue. A wealthy American woman, Mrs Dereck Walker, who loved children but was childless, to console herself adopted a child. She found at the Assistance Publique at Nancy, in December, 1916, a little girl named Hilda. She took her to her Paris home, and had her brought up as her own daughter. Four years later Mrs Walker died, leaving 600,000 francs (£21,000 at the old rate of exchange) to Hilda. Mr Walker kept the child, but the Prefect of the Meurthe ct Moselle Department, who represented the Assistance Publique in Ids department, and was the legal steward of the child, took Hilda away from Mr Walker, and entrusted her to the Countess oo Mcrschoss, a friend of the late Mrs Walker. It is in this “second episode” that trio complications began. Shortly before her death Mrs Walker took into her service a concierge, an Italian, named Antonio Schiro, a former journalist, who before the war was said to have been the editor of a revolutionary newspaper “-t Palermo. She also engaged a chambermaid, a French girl named Marie Porchcr, wlio was the intimate friend of Antonio Schiro. A year after the death of their American mistress tire concierge and the chambermaid were married in Paris, and declared little Hilda to be their child, thus conferring upon the newly-wedded pair the legal guardianship of the child, and the administration of the fortune left to Hilda by Mrs Walker. Against this manoeuvre the Prefect of the Meurtho et Moselle Department etrongly objected. Ho appealed to tho courts to annual the legitimation of the child by those whom he described as her pseudo-parents. He pointed out that the recognition of the child by Schiro and the chambermaid waa a pure fraud, and was planned simply to obtain possession of the fortune left to tho girl. Tho child, according to official records, is in all probability the daughter of a German etationmaetcr —a prisoner of war—and a French girl. DKaMATIC story composed.

But to this pica the alleged parents composed a dramatic romance of love. “ I was Schiro's secretary when he was editor of his newspaper in Palermo,” said Marie Porcher. “We fell in love. He had to flee from hia country owing (o hie political opinions. I returned to France, but my parents would not receive me. I went to Nancy, where a friend received mo, and there a daughter was born. I was left without resources. I had to hand over my child to the Assistance PubUquc, but my Nancy friend never lost trace of the child, and when a few years later I was again living with Schiro he informed me that Mrs Walker was taking charge of Hilda.

“Wc came to Prance to recover our daughter, but as Mrs Walker promised to leave all her fortune to our daughter we consented to enter her domestic service in order to ho near our child. When I was of age I married Schiro. Now we want our child.”