WINDFALL FOR TREASURY.

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 139, 19 August 1938, Page 3

WINDFALL FOR TREASURY.

FORTUNE OF A WOMAN RECLUSE. LONDON, July 14. A fortune left by Miss Julia Owston, aged 70, who was found dead in her room in a boarding house at Peak Hill, Sydenham, was ordered by the Coroner, Major W. H. Whitehouse, at a Lewisham inquest, to be handed over to the Treasury. There were, it was stated, no relatives. Miss Owston had lived in the boarding house for some years, her landlady, Mrs Louis A. Cooper stated. Her only relative was a brother who died in 1934. Securities valued at thousands of pounds and a large quantity of jewellery were found among the dead woman’s effects.

The Coroner said that a properly witnessed will, a long list of securities, and a package containing jeweller}' had been handed to him. It was explained that these had been found in the woman’s room. John M. Livett, who found Miss Owston dead on the floor after climbing to her window by a ladder when the door of her room was found to be locked, produced the will, and the Coroner remarked: “She had left everything to her brother, who has died. ’ ’ ,

A verdict of death from natural canses was recorded. Miss Owston was “a mystery woman ” and a recluse. Although she had lived in the same boarding house in Sydenham for nearly 20 years, she was unknown in the district, as she rarely left the spacious garden of her home.

She had no friends and received no letters.

Mrs Cooper, her landlady, said: “From what Miss Owston told me I gathered she was the last of her line. When her brother died she told me she had no one else in the world. She had investments on which she lived comfortably.”