PRIVATE INHERITS £166,000

Southland Times, Issue 24243, 28 September 1940, Page 3

PRIVATE INHERITS £166,000

LEGACY OF FORMER CONSTABLE ROAD WORKER WITH SEVEN CHILDREN With her last shilling—all that she had left of the week’s housekeeping money—a mother of seven sent a telegram to her soldier husband to tell him that he had inherited £166,000. “If it had been about £100,” she told an interviewer, “we should have been satisfied, but this has come as such a shock that I don’t know what I am doing and I am worried out of my life.”

Her husband, Private Frederick Hills, who is 56, of the East Surrey Regiment, got 24 hours’ special leave and went home to King street, Maidstone, Kent, to see his family. “But I’m not going to be any different,” he said. “I’m not going to let money go to my head. Anyway, I have a job in the Army to finish off at the moment.” Private Hills, a former roadman, has just inherited the money from his father, Mr John Hills, former police constable of Maidstone, who died at his home in Dearborn, United States, in May. The rest of the fortune is to be divided between Mr John Hills’ other five children. “I was cooking the lunch for my family when the letter—it was from the British Consul in Michigan—was brought by the postman,” his wife, Mrs Alice Hills, who is 46, stated. “I collapsed when I read it. When I came to, I counted my coppers to wire Fred. I found I had only just enough money in my purse to send the wire. Fred was granted 24 hours’ leave to come home and sort things out. I knew that his family in America had some money, but I never dreamt it was so much. “It will be a godsend. We have never been what you would call well off. The most my husband earned as a roadman was £2/18/- a week to keep our family of seven children on.” The youngest of Mrs Hills’ children is four—the eldest 26. “Now I shall be able to get them some nice clothes,” she said.