£100.000 WINDFALL

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13748, 10 September 1908, Page 8

£100.000 WINDFALL

ROMANTIC STORY

LONDON, July 11. ] A. romantic story of a big windlall comes from Sunderland. A poor Durham miner, named Ernest Uarnett. Douglass, who lives at Wingate, m iheheart of the colliery district, has just been informed that he is entitled to a fortune of no less than £100,000. The money was left by a certain \\ illiam Dawson Barnett, who, besides being interested in a successful gold mine, held shares in several industrial concerns. On his death in London, about two years ago, he bequeathed the whole of his fortune to his greatnephew, but efforts to trace the heir failed, and the money went into Chancery A Sunderland firm of solicitors have. however, succeeded in establishing tinfact that Ernest Barnett Douglass, ol Wingate, is the grand-nephew mentioned in the will.

Douglass at present occupies an unpretentious cottage in a street ncir Wingate Colliery, where he formerly worked as a shifter. He has not worked, however,* since the Wingate Colliery disaster, two years ago. o\\ niji. to ill-health, and he and his wife and family have been in very straitened circumstances, having to apply for parish relief. Two of Douglass's mates were killed in the Wingate disaster, and he would probably have shared the same fate but for the fact that he was apprehensive of something occurring and stayed at home, although he had his working clothes on.

Interviewed by a newspaper representative yesterday, Douglass told how on another occasion ho, narrowly escaped. About twenty years agp he was on his way to Victoria Hall, Sunderland, and changed his mind and turned back. Many children then perished in a terrible panic at the hall.