THE O’KEEFE HEIR FOUND.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1370, 6 July 1878, Page 3

THE O’KEEFE HEIR FOUND.

A SMALL T'BADEBMAN FALLS HeIK TO £5,000,000. Tho Limerick correspondent of the “ Cork Constitution” says:—A few months ago I informed you of the wonderful luck of the Limerick Buckleys in being discovered as the true heirs of about £250,000 in Australia, left to them by a poor boy, who, a criminal, left this city some forty years ago. In Clare a poor shoemaker was also discovered as the heir to about £100,000; but these chance hits of fortune “pale their ineffectual fires” before the latest case of “ good luck.” Yesterday Mr D. P. McCarthy, a native of Cork, architect, of Barrington street, received a letter signed Q-. A. Stanley, New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, informing him as follows : —“ lam directed to inform you that the first instalment of tho O’Keefe legacy has come to hand in your favour for £500,000. The whole or the greater portion of the £5,000,000 left by the deceased will come to you, except the portion allotted to your brothers, about which the Crown will decide.” Mr McCarthy received the intimation with great equanimity and quiet thankfulness that his first cousin, Charles Robert O’Keefe, late of Allahabad, India, who died a bachelor, had left him such a splendid fortune, which made him a millionaire five times repeated. The parents of the deceased Mr O’Keefe resided in Cork, and carried on a respectable business there as general merchants. His father and mother had occnsion ta visit London, and there, contrary to all expectation, his mother was suddenly confined in a hotel, and gave birth to the founder of the colossal fortune. Both Mr O’Keefe’s parents died before he reached his majority. He had one brother and one sister, but noth are dead. The brother died in Australia, to which ho emigrated many years ago, and his sister died in Cork, Tho chief heir in Limerick was often invited by the fivemillionaire to go out t ) India, but he had to decline the tempting offer in consequence of a naturally delicate constitution, unfitted to stand the torrid zone. He had also to decline a similar offer from the deceased’s brothers to go out to Australia, to both of whom ho stood in the relationship of first cousin, the mothers of the heir and the deceased being sisters. After a time spent in Cork with his father, and while yet only about eighteen years of age, Mr O’Keefe made his way to India, where he enlisted as a private soldier. Here, in this new sphere of life, his old habits never forsook him. He studied men, manners, but, above all, business. By assiduity and good conduct he at last received a commission, but he did not retain it long, believing that commerce was his real forte. Service in the East during the year 1842 naturally suggested to his mind that ho could make money by engaging in the opium traffic and other great branches of trade carried on in the East, and so he went into the opium trade, some said as an agent to the East India Company, others on his own account. Be this as it may, by close attention to business and good luck he soon acquired a colossal fortune, which will astonish many a modern Crccsus five millions of money in ready cash, and an income of £150,000 from landed and other property ! Mr O’Keefe died, unmarried, in February, 1876, when Messrs Carrington and Whigley, solicitors, of Calcutta, advertised for heirs, of which, apparently, there was no lack —no fewer than 175 applicants putting in claims as the next of kin of the deceased 5 but they were all put aside on investigation in favour of Mr McCarthy, of Limerick, who has four brothers, each of whom will come in for a twenty-fifth part of tho money and estate, but Mr McCarthy will be the recipient of the great bulk of the fortune. The first intimation Mr McCarthy had of deceased’s death was through Mr Maurice Lenihan, J.P., of the lamerick “ Reporter,” handing him a paper in which the heirs were 1 advertised for. Mr McCarthy at once placed his case as heir in the hands of Mr Isaac Butt, member for the city, -who, having interested himself on Mr McCarthy’s account, has had a good deal to do with the successful recognition of the latter’s claims as the real heir of this immense property in conjunction with his four brothers, Mr McCarthy being tho eldest. The heir is a very industrious and energetic man, and had just completed the building of * a terrace of houses on Ids own account, which he named Barrington terrace, when the letter ‘‘On Her Majestv’s service” proclaimed to him his unprecedented good fortune. His father is an b dependent farmer residing at Abbeyfeale, where his mother died, and all the family are in comfortable or even independent circumstances. The heir served his time in Cork, where ho was born, with tho building firm of Messrs Diclison and Taylor. At an early age lie started business for himself in Newcastle West, and after several years of close application to business was select ed as architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners up to tho period of tho disestablishment of the Irish Church. Since then he has resided and carried on his business in Limerick with accustomed good business habits, and was in receipt of a competence,'if not more.