Night Club Queen's Enormous Fortune

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 576, 31 January 1929, Page 9

Night Club Queen's Enormous Fortune

£I,OOO A WEEK INCOME DAUGHTERS MARRIED PEERS (Australian and. N.Z. Press Association) (United Service) Reed. 9.5 a.m. LONDON, Wed. The newspapers this morning give startling figures concerning the fortunes which Kate Meyrick, the “Night Club Queen/’ who was sentenced yesterday to 15 months’ gaol with hard labour on charges of bribery, amassed during her ten years’ association with night clubs. It is stated that she gave ex-Ser-geant Goddard, who was sentenced to 18 months’ and fined £2,000, at least £IOO a week. In 1919 she was assisting her husband, an Irish doctor, to run a nursing home in Ireland. She left him with eight young children to rear on 15s a week, in a few years she was able to invest £27,000 in one club alone. She sent her sons to Harrow and her daughters to Roedean and Girton. Two of the latter married peers, the Earl of Kinnoul and Baron de Clifford. Her income for 1928 is estimated at over £I,OOO a week. In her secret service, which equalled that of Scotland Yard, she employed ex-detectives, disguised as members of various street callings, to give warnings of raids. She became over-confident, however, and admitted strangers to the “Forty-Three Club,” which led to her undoing. WHO OWNS GODDARD’S HOARD? No decision was reached as to the legal ownership of Goddard’s hoard of £12,000 worth of bank notes seized by the police at the safe deposit. Goddard’s advisers are expected to institute proceedings for the return of the money, less the fine and the costs. They contend that however the money was acquired it is still Goddard’s. The decision of the case has produced most outspoken comment in the newspapers. The “Daily Express” says the case opened the eyes of the authorities to a police scandal which had been common knowledge for years. Everyone who knows anything about life in the West End, says the paper, is perfectly aware that the proprietors of night clubs, gambling dens and disorderly houses pay regular tribute to the police. Everyone accepted it as commonplace except the higher police authorities. Mrs. Meyrick at one time was interested in five clubs. Her profits totalled easily £I,OOO a week.

The “Daily Telegraph” says: It can hardly be doubted that the recent dangerous cloud of suspicion in the public mind against the metropolitan police could be traced in no small degree to the scandals which spread from the strange immunity enjoyed by some fashionable night clubs in London. The sentences passed by Mr. Justice Avory may w-ell have been intended to have a sharply deterrent effect upon others.