“RICH UNCLES.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20786, 3 August 1929, Page 32

“RICH UNCLES.”

SOME HAVE COME TRUE. AUSTRALIAN EXAMPLES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) ' SYDNEY, July 25. It would seem that once' a week at least the press of Australia succeeds in unearthing some new claimant to a fortune—money in chancery or millions held in trust in America or Timbuotoo. Each party is duly interviewed and gives a circumstantial account of his family history, and says how certain he is that the fortune really belongs to himself and his children and his aunt and his uncle and his grandmother’s uncle and aunt, arid so to the end of the family chain. Most of the claims are soon forgotten, and no more is heard of them. On many of the claims to fortune fortunes have been spent, the claimants in such cases feeing backed by others who expect a share in the estate.

But these fortunes are not always myths. A year ago a wealthy rope manufacturer named Jones died intestate in Wales. By the .merest chance—it always happens that way somehow—a Brisbane family of Jones learnt of the fortune and is now claiming that its members are the heirs.' The Mr Jones iii Brisbane left home to roam the world while his brother stayed behind to make a fortune. The Brisbane family is now endeavouring to prove that the rope maker was their uncle. The. fortune in this case is not a myth, but .can the claimants make good their case? Will they be as fortunate as Gwendoline Bailey, a waitress dt a St. Kilda (Melbourne) guest house, who became a paying guest in a night. That was about three years. ago. She discovered that she was heiress to £15,700. She had been working since she was 13 years of age. She was an orphan, and she learnt of her good fortune by chance. A friend of hers saw an advertisement' in a “ Missing Friends ” column. After she had collected the money she said , that she was going to have a motor car built to order.

A Swede in Queensland, not long ago, woke up one morning to find he was worth not only £SOOO a year, but that he was also a count —Count Moran Falkenherg. He had been a member of the A.W.U. and the Timber Workers’ Union. He came to Australia in a training ship* hut deserted and was sent to gaol. He wandered over Queensland repairing fences, working in sawmills, and trapping rabbits. Then there was a Scot in Adelaide who gave up firing a furnace in a suburban brick yard to share in a fortune of £24,000. He had been out of work, and he was practically a vagrant before he got the job in the brick yard. Possibly the strangest case in the hunt for fortunes in Australia was the searen of Mrs Sarah Ford, from Worcester, England, who spent several years in the Commonwealth, trying to find an‘ enormous estate in the heart of Sydney, which was stated to have been granted to one Edward Morris, with whom she claimed relationship. This man had been transported to Australia in 1822, but later he was found innocent and emancipated. It was claimed that by way of compensation a large tract of land in Sydney had been granted to him. The investigators, however, found themselves immediately baulked. His conviction, his arrival in Australia, had been recorded, but there was no mention of his “ considerable estates.”