A SYDNEY ROMANCE

Hokitika Guardian, 29 April 1926, Page 4

A SYDNEY ROMANCE

LONDON March 16.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (the Lord Chancellor—Lord Cave—Lords Parmoor, Wren bury, Blanesburgh, and Darling) yesterday heard an appeal of Mrs Mary Scales, of Sydney—who was present in court and had conducted her own caso in the courts below—from a judgment of the Supreme Court of New South Walse dismissing her claim against the executors of her husband’s will and finding that earnings of hers she had placed in her husband’s hands were gifts to him. Mrs Scales said that he only held them in trust for her. The value of the lisuband’s estate eras proved at more than £50,000, £32,000 being real property. In his will he said: “My reason for leaving only. £2OO to each of my sons is that I acknowledge that whatever property I am possessed of is the result of moneys earned and saved by my present wife, and which she has given to

The husband was George Scales, a stonemason, who in 1883 emigrated from England, as a widower with three children, and became, as he acknowledged, through use of Mrs Scales’s earnings, a prosperous speculator in land and houses. Mrs Scales was born in Tasmania, and it was said could not read, lit evidence she. said that she had hawked honey, dealt in rags hones and bottles, and carried on a laundry until 1897, and thereafter, until 1913, conducted a business in Sydney, first as beauty specialist and then as a clairvoyantc, until the police intervened.

She said she had made much of her money by washing for the Navy. At one time she washed 2,000 hammocks a week.

She used to hide her savings in the garden, whence, from a bed of lilies, she dug up one night in her husband’s presence, £12,000 in gold, the weight of which was two hundredweight. DAGS OF SOVEREIGNS.

The husband failed to lift the box out of the hole, and the wife drew from the box 12 baking powder tins containing sovereigns, and several canvas bags of gold. When she asked her husband if lie would take it to the bank ho replied : “ They would arrest me for burglary.” The husband placed properties in his wife’s name to the value of £25,000 and in his will after a trust for daughters of £5 a week, left the residue of income to his wife. MESMERISED FOR 39 YEARS.

llis executors, the respondents, said that Mrs Scales claimed to have predicted the war in 1912 with particularity as to dates, and asserted that her husband bad her under mesmeric influence for 39 years.

She said she. had been given two separate sums of £2.000 each by a stranger, and that she picked up 3,000 bricks dropped from passing carts by which she built a house.

Lord Darling said that he did not understand suggestions of business incapacity in illiterate persons. “Why there are people in the House of Lords,” he said, “ who can only use a signet ring.”

“ That,” said Lord Darling to another statement. “ reminds me of the epitaph of a man who wrote: ‘ If only I’d stuck to Epsom salts 1 shouldn’t be lying in these ’ere vaults.’ ”

Lord Darling also observed ; It is sug_ gested the testator was acting as trustee for his wife. lie was clearly a man of property, because it is in evidence that he kept two women besides bis wife. 1 do not know whether it is suggested be was keeping them as trustee for his wife. The hearing was adjourned.