TIED UP FOR 100 YEARS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 633, 9 April 1929, Page 9

TIED UP FOR 100 YEARS

HUGE FORTUNE AT SIBKE MELBOURNE WOMAN'S CUHM Mrs. Edith Rebecca Hedderwack, ot Moonee Ponds, Melbourne, who is 75 years of age, and who is claiming portion of a shipbuilder's fortune of £1,000,000, says that she is confident that her claim could not be refuted. She explained that the fortune, which had been amassed about 120 years ago, was now in the Bant: of England, where is was earning interest. William or John Mansfield, the shipbuilder referred to, who was born about 140 years ago, marrie:d twice, and died in Germany, where he had a large shipbuilding yard. Mrs. Hedderwick explained that his second wife had no children, but the will provided that she should use the interest accruing on the fortune, and that at her death the money should go to the Mansfield family, of which the Moonee Ponds resident was a member. The second wife, who evidently w'as not pleased with the will, tied up the money for 100 years, as she was entitled to do under the German law. The time has now expired, and as Mrs. Hedderwick’s grandfather was a brother of the shipbuilder, and her father was dead, she claims that she was entitled, with other members of the Mansfield family, to a share in the fortune. She said she understood that the shipbuilder’s first wife also died childless. Explaining how she had come to hear that heirs to the fortune were being sought, Mrs. Hedderwick said that, she had been informed in April last year of an article which had appeared in an Irish paper. This article, which was headed "Is Your Name Mansfield?” related that somewhere about 1798 a young man named Mansfield, from Ardmore, County Waterford, had emigrated to Liverpool to seek his fortune. He made a little money, and then went to Germany, where he established a shipbuilding yard, which later developed into a big undertaking.