HOBBS’S MILLIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3714, 19 May 1925, Page 60

HOBBS’S MILLIONS.

CLAIMANTS’ SHARE OF PIRST DISTRIBUTION. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, May 8. Sixty happy people met at a house in Strath’field, one of Sydney's suburbs, a few days ago to find that, by the touch of the philosopher’s stone, their dreams, and the dreams of the other of the 250 claimants to the millions left by John Hobbs, of a silk weaving family, more than a century ago, had been converted into wealth. Practically the whole of the claimants are in New South Wales, and the majority are in the Old Hawkesb.iry district, where Robert Hobbs, a brother of John Hobbs, secured a farm at the end of the eighteenth century. When John Hobbs died he willed the income of his property to his brother -Robert, and upon the latter's death ter his “lawfully begotten descendants.” Robert Hobbs received his income, but his children, it is stated, strangely enough never claimed the property, and it was diverted to the Crown. The King’s solicitor, it is now stated, has promised to make £2,000,000 available for distribution among the 250 claimants. The money it is expected will be distributed this year. According to a newspaper report, the 60 claimants. who held the meeting, expressed themselves as satisfied when they learned of the glad tidings. But, as a little compensation for some of life’s painful realities, one might easily have expected to find them, not merely satisfied, but lifted to the very summit of terrestrial felicity.