LEGACIES OF ILL-LUCK.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17574, 1 December 1928, Page 14 (Supplement)

LEGACIES OF ILL-LUCK.

When the late Mr Clifford, a resident of England, made his daughter a gift of £17,000 he could never have dreamed that tho result of this generous present would he to force her into the Bankruptcy Court (says a London paper). Yet that was the result. The money was in £1 shares of an a»sur'anoe company which afterwards failed and.was liquidated. But the shares had never heen fully paid up, and by law the holder of such shares is liable for the whole of the.unpaid balance. This .with unpaid oalls and interest, came to £16,781, and sinoe Miss Clifford could not pay it she was made bankrupt. IX one suddenly heard that someone had left him £IOOO one anould be highly delighted. Yet there are people who stand in terror of great riohea and their responsibilities. A girl named Sonia Lauricz, when told she was heiress to £2,000,000, poisoned herself. A naturalised American named Kaufman had a letter to say that he had inherited a fortune in Germany, but the lawyer added that he must claim \ the legacy within a certain time. His | doctor told Kaufman that he was not i fit for a long journey, but Kaufman i vowed that this was nonsense, and | started from New York with his wife and child in the liner St. PauL Two days out he had a serious heart attack, and on the third day he died and. was buried at sea. Precisely the same fate befei a Scotoh lady, Miss Agnes Grey, who had . sailed from Liverpool to claim a large j fortune left her by a relative in Mexico, j She also was warned by her doctor that she was not fit to travel. It is a curious coincidence that she also was a passenger on the St. PauL ' With his last breath the miser Maximilian Harshel tried to whisper to his adopted daughter Bella the secret ,

DAUGHTER MADE BANKRUPT. A MISER'S HIDDEN HOARD.

of where he had left his money, but ' death cut short the words explaining the whereabouts of his fortune, which i was known to exceed £200,000. After his death a will was found, leaving everything to the adopted daughter, but . giving no details of where the money was. The girl spent years and every penny she possessed in a search for the money, but never sucoeeded in finding it. in the end she died a pauper, the unfortunate victim of her lost legacy. One canot claim a legacy without giving his real name and submitting to certain legal formalities. An Italian woman, a cook named Teresa Tirone, was informed that a relative in France had died and that she was next heir to a fortune of some £14,000. She borrowed enough to pay her fare to Lyons, and successfully claimed her money. Then she rashly allowed herself to be Interviewed by a reporter, and her photograph was published. A detective, happening to see the photograph, put on his thinking cap, and presently turned up the police records. He found that the woman j had been sentenced to two years' im- ( prisonment some years earlier, but had | forfeited her bail. So before enjoying j her legacy Teresa had to serve her I sentence.

Legacies are sometimes accompanied by conditions unpleasant to the legatee. In a recent case a poor London woman was left a house, with the proviso that a man and his wife should be allowed to remain on in two rooms, rent free. The legatee herself went to live in the house, but found that she could not get on with the tenants. Slid offered to buy them out, but the man scornfully refused to move. Matters went from bad to worse, and in the end the unfortunate woman poisoned herself and died.