HEIR TO £2,250,000.

Otago Witness, Issue 3823, 21 June 1927, Page 55

HEIR TO £2,250,000.

SYDNEY MAN’S SURPRISE. SYDNEY, June 2. Byron, it is said, awoke to find himself famous. David White, a Sydney business man approaching middle age, awoke one day this week to find himself heir to a cool £2,250,000. This inheritance camo to him through an uncle who died last year, after amassing his wealth in diamond dealing and speculation. The inheritance represents something like £256,000 in cash and £2,000,000 in property. Behind this announcement there lies a story covering many dusty pages of history, and revealing bleak depths of human bitterness and suffering. It starts at NishniNovgorod, Russia, in the middle of last century, when Solomon Wheinsky was a young Jewish fur dealer. The taxgatherers" of the Czarist days made Jews their special mark, and Solomon’s business suffered through their attentions. At last he revolted. Solomon’s brother disappeared into the mines of Siberia, and Solomon and two sisters fled to Riga, which they reached after many days of bitter cold and hunger. I Aboard a smuggler’s boat they went to | Amsterdam, whence Solomon Wheinsky went to London, and the two sisters to America.

Solomon settled in Whitechapel in 1852 as a ‘'kosher” butcher. He married a Russian girl and changed his name to White. .He had two sons, Abel and Aaron. Abel committed the unforgiveable sin in the eyes of the Jews of London of marrying outside his faith, and their persecution of him lasted for decades and extended to his son, David. Their only sympathiser was Abel White’s brother. Aaron, but he left London for South Africa. David White, at lastsickened of the feud of his co-religionists, left London for Australia with nothing, worked his passage as a steward in 1913, and after fulfilling various poorly-paid jobs, saved enough to launch out on a business career. At the time of his inheritcnce he had built up a reputation and a comfortable business as the representative of a London company. In the meantime, Aaron White, in South Africa, had become a member of a group of men associated with Cecil Rhodes. Of the building of Aaron’s fortune there were many, wiki tales of encounters wi.th illicit diamond buyers, of bloodshed, of thefts, of murders, but out of the welter Aaron White emerged a Wealthy man, to become richer by speculation. Aaron never married and when he died last year, Ivo did not forget the son of that brother who had committed an indiscretion which he alone had been able to overlook. With the exception of some small bequests, he . left the whole of his huge wealth to David.