“BARON” AVERS HE WANTS CASH, NOT THE TITLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17863, 3 June 1926, Page 11

“BARON” AVERS HE WANTS CASH, NOT THE TITLE.

TALE OF FORTUNE IS APPLE SAUCE, WIFE SAYS. (Special to the “ Star.”) SAN FRANCISCO, April 16. It was corned beef and cabbage last night for “ Baron Fitzwilliams,” otherwise and better known as Ray R. Dietrick. late oiler on the motor ship Mazatlan. The scion of nobility arrived at his temporary baronial hall at 1256 Masonic Avenue yesterday after a journey from Honolulu, where he was first apprised that a share in the estate of Lord Fitzwilliams, dead these twenty-five years, and the title might be his. “ I don’t care a whit for the title, but 5,000.000 dollars I’m told the old man left.” he said. “He was my grandfather and I’ve been told that he made most of his fortune in California, near Fresno. “ A letter from my sister, which T received in Honolulu, told me that I had a chance at the fortune. I had already left the Mazatlan, so I grabbed pasage on the Sonoma, and got in this morning. Now I’m going to open the battle to get what is rightfully mine.” To all of which the potential baroness, whose dressmaking shingle reads, “ Mrs Matilda Dietrick,” replied “applesauce.” “ If the baron is going to spend any money proving up on that title, he’ll have to earn it,” she said. “ I wouldn’t spent a five cent piece on it myself. In the first place. I’m not at all sure that there is a fortune. In the second place if there is one how could anybody prove a right in it: and in the third place, if there had been a fortune, chances are that it has all been spent long before this.”