HEIRESS'S £80,000

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 54, 26 November 1937, Page 9

HEIRESS'S £80,000

— Own Correspondent).

% ■ - Divided Among Fifteen Strangers LIVED IN ONE ROOM

fR-tr Air Mail-

LONDON, OCt. 28. Eighty thousand pounds, left by an eccentric woman-.of mystery — a woniah who lived alone in one room and who would have been disinherited had ske married — is to- be divided among fifteen people, most of whom she had never -seen. The marriage ban was originally imposec. to save her from fortunehunters. Her estate is to be divided in various proportions according to the degrees of relationship of tho fifteen beneficiaries. This was decided yesterday at the Laneashire Chancery Oourt, Liverpool. Noire of the fifteen- knows how much the others will receive. Tho money was left by Miss Jessie Oxley, of Hutchinson street, Liverpool. She inherited it from her grandfather, a cutler in St. John's lane, Liverpool. She left no will when she died two years ago, and litigation was started as to how the estate should be ' divided. Thre'e of the main beneficiaries died shortly before proceedings were started all within a short time of each other. Miss Oxley 's nearest known f elative, a Mf. Matthew Burke, married in America unknown to Ms family in England, and died childless. "She was a handsome old lady," a friend told the Daily Mirror last night. She lacked confidenee in hnman nature, aua she:died a spinster through the wish of her parents. I believe that there was a clause in the will whicli would have disinherited her if she had married. She kept this Wish to hcr dying day. The clause was pTobably put in to Stop f ortune hunters. ' ' Miss Oxley was summoned for failiiig to pay rates, refused to pay supertax, and twice had receiving orders served against her, bu.t she was never maae bankrupt. She lived alone in one room, cooked her own- meals, hardly ever entertained visitors and was never seen to cross the threshold after dark. Many of her fifteen beneficiaries never saw ber. They are scatterOd in all parts of the world — in America, Cahada and England. Practically all trace had been lost of one branch of the family, and they were finally found through Dr. Barnardo's kome in Canada by rccords kept of the farms on which they had worked.