EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS BY WOMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2046, 11 May 1893, Page 35

EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS BY WOMEN.

A lady periodically prefers a claim of £300,000,000 to the Lord Chief Justice against the English Government. The millions, it is represented, have been accumulating in the bank since the beginning of the century. Another extraordinary story has been published by a Russian newspaper respecting an immense fortune which is shortly to be claimed from • the Bank of England. According to this circumstantial statement, the widow of a rich English Jew, Ovshy Levi, deposited her capital in the bank in the year 1803. This capital, with its interest, now amounts to 600,000,000 roubles, or £60,000,000. Numerous claimants bave from time to time appeared, but only one, an American lady, Miss Humeric, succeeded lately in proving her title to 14 5 th part, the whole of the remainder going to the Russian subject, Ann Finkelstein (nee Levi), the wife of a jeweller at Ismail, at the mouth of the Danube. She has only to produce certificates of the birth of her father and of his uncle, through whom she is the direct heiress. These certificates are stated to be easily procurable from Furth, in Bavaria.

The citizens of Toronto have recently been somewhat astonished by a claim which has just been made by an English lady to the whole of the land on which the city is built. The claimant is a Mrs J. H. PilkiE gton, of North Kensington, and the demand she has made through the city solicitor is based upon the alleged receipt by her father-in-law, Lieutenant Pilkington, from George 111 of three grants of land in Ontario in return for services rendered in the exploration of the interior of Africa. The city of Toronto is now built upon one of these grants, and the claim is for the whole of the ground rents. The land value of the city is over 83,000,000d01, so that should the claim be made out, which is not unnaturally regarded as extremely doubtful, the inheritance would be a highly valuable one. One of the islands in Lake Simcoe is, by the way, named Pilkington Island, in honour of an officer of the Royal Engineers who served in Canada.