Fortunes Won and Lost.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 January 1923, Page 1

Fortunes Won and Lost.

£1.5.901) MADE IN A BET. LONDON, Nov 22. A hint of the roniautii life of F.rues t Dyer, the young man shot in a mulfio with the polite in a Keni'lnirotlgli hotel, was given by the coroner a I the inqint-l im Monday. Me said tho history of Dyer's life would make splendid material for a sensational novel. I Ivor was Ihe -am of a br-w <'r's employee living at Brighton, tic t ! to lie an engineer, but Bri ’ could not satisfy the ambition which spurr: d him on. lie turned to Au.-iralia am! to seelin' a pas-ng. l to Wc.-tmu Au-tra-lia. There he found that tin Soup Seas called him. and shipping i > a pearling -hot ! found mien! unin the Torres Straits. P-.ai i-h.-iu r. en

gin or. fruit farmer hy turn, he aina-s- ' cii a eonsiderabie fort line AVAR HONOURS AND .MARRIAGE. | Then came the war. F.nli-tiug in the | first Australian Fxpedit ionary I'on-e. | lie was in the Gallipoli Landing and j won the D.C..M. Badly wounded, lie | was -gut to England ami di-charg'd. j Adventure till bookmmd to him. ami j lie obtained a commission in the Royal : Engineers. Ho got to I-rance, only to' lie blown up hy a mine, ami was sent bank to England. A job was found , him at the Gretna munition town, j That was in 1910. and there he met and married a young Scottish munition worker, Miss Annie Watson. Slid ; Im tried to get hack to France and wa - on the point of sailing when he was : sent, to tho Rroductioti Department ol ■■

the Air Ministry. When he was demobilised., he found employment under the Disposals Board. Dyer was now approaching Alio zenith of his luck. Ilia wife. Mrs Annie Dyer, tells how tho change of fortune came about. “We were living at Hariesdcn in 1920,” she told a reporter, “when, on olio night of the day oh which tho Lincolnshire Handicap was run, my husband came home and told me he had won between Bid,ooo and £IO,OOO. He had put the whole of the money he hod in the bank, hi s gratuity from the Army, on Furious, which had won the Lincolnshire Handicap at 33 to 1. HORSES RIDDEN BY WIFE. “He came here to Kenley, bought ■She Welcomes, a large IG-roomed house with four or five acres of ground for something over £SOOO and started a training stable. He had a large 1 number of horses sent to him and employed 14 or 15 stable lads. A wealthy man placed a number of horses with i him and he went to Doncaster and spent hundreds of pounds on yearlings | for himself. He obtained special per-; mission to train on Kenley Common, and I, riding at 7st., used to ride the horses in their gallops. “Just then he could not seem to do anything wrong, lie went to the Newmarket October Meeting and every horso lie hacked won. He came home with thousands of pounds in Ins pocket. “But that luck could not last. His fortune changed with the 'destruction of our home by fire in April 1921. He was at Brighton and 1 was at Scotland, and the house was shut up. . My husband claimed £12.000 from the insurance companies, which resisted t Jt e< claim. “Last July ho flew to Paris and later I joined him at Boulogne. We parted there on the best of terms, and from chat day to this 1 had not seen or heard from him.”