SQUANDERED WINDFALLS

Taranaki Daily News, 28 December 1929, Page 11

SQUANDERED WINDFALLS

SOME AMAZING STORIES. A LONG-LOST UNCLE TRAP. We all know what the traditional re? cipient of a windfall does. He takes to drink, or, at all events, squanders his inheritance, and after leading a shocking life dies in the workhouse. And, unfortunately; he is pretty true to life. Dead men’s gold docs not do a quarter of the good that it should. There are many exceptions, of course. A good many "windfalls” neither benefit nor injure those who are supposed to get them, because they are purely imaginary. Of late the American fortune finders have been paying special attention to the C —s, who, it is said, may have a claim to the estate of an Irishman. All that those in a position to know the facts can say about him is that he went to Canada when young and ultimatelydied there practically penniless. But the men across the Atlantic have special information to the effect that he-left an an estate valued at £5,000,000, and that this is awaiting rightful claimants! This is a swindle. The estate is nonexistent, and people who send money "that their claims may be submitted’’ will certainly lose it. A number of the stories of long-lost uncles came from the Continent, where there .are numerous agencies for exploiting people who expect fortunes to drop from the skies. I recently saw a letter from a Belgian firm to a man living in Lincolnshire. After stating that a relative of his, who lived in Bombay, had left £3OOO, the "flat” hunters proceeded: "In order that you can get quickly this money, you are requested to send us your birth certificate and the sum of £5.”

The man kept bls money in his poekdt —wisely. Other windfalls, though real, only a little more affect those on whom they descend. I know an agent who paid a poor man between £7OOO and £BOOO, and immediately he divided the whole eum between three of his relatives, stating that he would not use a farthing of it. I had the pleasure of handing another man —an artisan —about £2OOO. A year or so later I heard he was in the workhogse, and inferred that he had run through the money and in the process seriously undermined his health. But he had actually put the fund in a bank, and when he died intestate shortly afterwards hie only daughter recovered it. And though the guardians made a claim on it for hie maintenance, she alone may be said to have benefited by it. Every agent whose experience goes back to pre-war days has met beneficiaries so cautious that nothing but,gold would really satisfy them, though some of them had to take notes. An elderly woman went to the office of a friend of mine with a small bag, and asked for her £4OOO in gold! When it was explained to her that that amount in gold would be about 701 b in weight, she herself laughed heartily. Every agent, toe, has helped to invest money that has come to them unexpectedly. It is not always the old story—“ Easy come, easy ‘go.” : Still, windfalls are generally thrown ;away. A woman hawker, who usually slept under a hedge or in a barn, once came up to London to draw £GOO. She took the money in notes, and a fortnight later her daughter wrote, asking where it had gone. It had certainly ’-aniohed, and no trace of it, I believe, has ever been discovered. EVERY PENNY GONE. Another small estate was scattered in equally mysterious circumstances. It amounted to nearly £3OOO, and was recovered by a successful agent for a man he found in a Salvation Army shelter. Only a few months after the money was paid to this favourite of fortune he called on the agent and mdca' ourcd to sell him about two dozen fancy waistcoats, all that remained of his inheritance.

“Have you spent all that money so soon?” asked the shocked agent. "Of course not,” replied the man in an injured tone. “But,” he added mournfully, “it’s all gone, every penny.” Where it had gone he. could not or would not say. Similar was a man for whom the same agent recovered a dormant legacy of £2OOO. This man, on coming of age had inherited £5OOO, squandered it, and then disappeared, and when tho agent found him he was doing odd jobs in a London market.

“No more going the pace,” he said, when the £2OOO wae paid him. ''l’ve had enough of that. I’ll get a shop, and take care of my money.” It looked us if he would carry out his intention, for ho bought a shop at Greenwich, married again, and settled down, becoming the very pattern of the model suburban tradesman. While here he associated mainly with the particular chum of his hectic days; who, being now a churchwarden and a pillar of society in North London, was as much a steadying influence ae he had been the reverse formerly. There was, however, a kink in the legatee’s brain. After he had been at Greenwich about six months he disappeared, taking with him the contents of the till, as well as his wife’s jewellery and other odds and ends, and then he

rapidly went down —down, till he reached the workhouse, where he died. Even more remarkable was the dispersion of a fortune of £250,000. It was inherited by a poor old man in Dublin through the death of a cousin in America, and nearly'all of it went to agents in that country, he himself actually receiving, I understand, only about £2OOO. He soon ran through it. When his only occupation seemed to be wandering from one public-house to another his daughter suggested that, the day being the fiftieth anniversary of his marriage, he should celebrate his golden wedding “in style.” As his wife had been dead sixteen years, he did not feel any particular urge to rejoice, and accordingly he refused to jubilate, in style or otherwise. His daughter thereupon attacked him, bashing his hat down over his eyes, and to escape her wrath he fled to a common lodginghouse. OUT TO BEAT THE LAW. Shortly afterwards he was found here in the midst of squalor, his money gone, his clothes in pawn, and with no other relics of his departed glory except empty beer bottles.

At the request of one legatee I undertook to act as his banker. For days the man was hardly ever off my doorstep, and at last I was obliged to give him the balance of hie money and tell him to clear out. There is a further difficulty in dealing with squanderers. When their money is gone, they occasionally try to squeeze more’ out of you by blackmail or legal process. I have known persons throw away large sums that they could never have obtained unaided, and then attempt to get agreements made between them and” an agent set aside on the ground that’ those agreements were “catching” and “unconscionable.”.