RICH HERMITS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18618, 14 July 1930, Page 2

RICH HERMITS.

SOME STRANGE INSTANCES Many stories of strange folk who prefer to live in squalor despite the possession of riches are constantly brought to light by the tragic manner in which they end their careers, of privation and extreme discomfort. There was a ’case of an eccentric Thames-side recluse, John Louis Pigott Leman, known locally as the "Hermit of Sunbury,” who lived in one room and died in his chair. Once he -was known as a brilliant dentist, inventor of an automatic blowpipe for soldering in dentistry. On his wife’s death he seemed to lose interest in life. He let the house, in which he had a large interest, with the exception of one barely furnished room. Here he cooked his own meals, ate and slept. Among his ancestors he claimed a former Lord Mayor of London. Sir John Leman, who bought the manor of Wardboys, in Huntingdonshire from Oliver Cromwell. Another ancestor he claimed was Sir William Leman, of Northaw, Herts., who was a High Sherriff and M.P. for Hertfordshire, ' and was made a baronet by Charles 11. A locked chest in a London bank contained the secret of another old recluse, Charles Herbert Church, of Highbury. Before his death he lived in a furnished room in Liverpool Road. Mr Church was believed to have been an architect, and was reputedly well-to-do, although he lived on little more than 8/- a week. He was, according to the wife of the proprietor of the coffee-rooms where he lodged exceedingly economical in his habits, and would not even buy a newspaper. Letters came to him from all parts of the world. Many were believed to contain vouchers for securities, which the old man would Immediately transfer to another envelope which he sent to his bank. He was so secretive that when a letter came for him he always tore off the address from the notepaper. When he lay dying in hospital he was asked if he would disclose the names of relatives or friends, but the old man refused to do so. His only wish was that he should be cremated and his ashes scattered to the winds.

Another story seems hardly credible, and reads almost like a page from fiction. In what should have been the prime of life, a man was found dying of starvation in a house in Islington. The room he occupied was barricaded with a two-feet-thick wall of rubbish. To reach him, the police officers had to dig a tunnel through the rubbish, and when the room was cleared seven tons of bottles, milk tins, and the like were carted away. Yet the man, William Macfarlane, was only 45, and found to be comparatively well off. He had a balance of £ll6 at- the Savings Bank, and held a number of bonds and shares. He held 50 shares in the Victoris Palace Music Hall, interests in Farrow's Bank, and companies that had gone into liquidation; deeds of a house; a parcel of bonds; money orders and postal orders; and strangely enough, an officer's sword and busby. The miserable room he lived in measured only llfeet by 5 feet 6 inches, so that taking off the 2ft. barricade which surruonded the room except at one end, where a mattress was laid, the only space in which he moved and breathed was an aperture 18 inches wide down the middle. Neighbours said that when he first rented the room he was clad in rags, and his only possessions were an enamel saucepan and an enamel pail. He had no work and said he had no re--1 lations and no friends. Every morning he would go out and pick rubbish from the streets. He let his hair grow long, until it was like a black fur collar over his shoulders. The hut on the cliffs in which Mr Herbert Callingham, the "hermit of Rottingdean,” Sussex, was found dead, was only about 14 feet by 8 feet. It was packed so full of furniture, books, manuscripts, and rubbish that some of the chairs were hung from the roof for want of space. There was no fireplace in the hut, and a couch was used as a bed. Mr Callingham’s only companion was a big Irish terrier. More than 20 years ago he benefited from the will of his aunt, Sarah E. Cumbridge, who used to write fiction for children under the name of "Sidney E. Gray,” but for years he had lived the life of a recluse in the hut, where, on top of a hill, he had lived and died under the most depressing conditions. He was a strange, quiet person, son of a writer and artist, and was himself at one time an art master. Papers also showed that he was a Mason, who had been a pastmaster many years ago, and there were several bank books found, one of which showed that he had had £IOOO in the Birbeck bank.

Collection of Treasures. But it is not only to the male sex that these eccentricities belong. There died, a few years ago, one of the most remarkable mystery women of modern time. She had lived for years the life of a hermit in Gravesend in a large, well-appointed house, and at last was carried to the town infirmary, where she passed away. Afterward police officers searched the house and then an amazing collection of treasures was revealed. There were bags packed with sovereigns and half sovereigns and cases filled with silver coins, all sorted according to their value. And all of them wrapped and concealed under strips of old linen which had been torn up and wound many times around the money. There were securities of considerable value and the whole must have amounted to between three and four thousand pounds. A lonely wanderer of the Seven Seas, Mr' Edward Wyllis Scripps, who had a controlling interest in 28 daily newspapers in 15 States of the United States, was yet another to succumb to the desire for a solitary existence. A few years ago he developed an almost fanatical hatred of the noise and hustle that had played their part in the amassing of his fortune. He turned over the management of his vast interests to his only son, left his wife on their 10,000acre ranch in California, and set .out. He had fitted up a luxury yacht in which he could roam the seas. It was his boast that not a sound could penetrate, and certainly there was the stillness of the tomb about it. All sounds were shut out by artificial means from • the ears of the "Millionaire Hermit of the Seas,” as he was called.