TIDY MAN FORGOT!

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22338, 24 May 1947, Page 2

TIDY MAN FORGOT!

WILL NOT YET FOUND LEFT CONSIDERABLE SUM LONDON, May 1. He was so tidy that he kept receipted bills for every week for 40 years. He was an “unbelievably tidy” man. But there was one thing he forgot. Simeon Marcus Cousa, Rumanianborn Manchester cotton merchant, lived for 40 years in Room 302 of the Midland Hotel, Manchester. He was known to four decades of hotel servants as the man who never came down to dinner. Every meal he ate was served in his suite. This stout dark-haired pleasant man was shy. No one came to see him. IJe spoke to no one but members of the hotel staff. Was Recluse Hotel servants label their guests with a nickname or a room number, but to everyone at the Midland Hotel for nearly half a century room No. 302 was still “Mr. Cousa.” Sundays, weekdays, holidays, Mr. Cousa rarely left the hotel. “He was so neat and tidy,” said two generations of chambermaids. “You hardly knew he was there,” remarked a dozen receptionists. “He paid his bill in cash to the exact minute every week,” said the office. For 30 years only one man served him with meals. He was an accomplished linguist and a well-read man of the world, although he had lived so long in one hotel room. He was always so neatly dressed and so obviously well groomed. He appeared to be a man of meticulous habits and ordered mind. Then one day Mr. Cousa died as quietly as he had lived —on November 12 1945. His solicitors are still searching tor the will of this ultra-methodical little man. He left a considerable fortune.