ROMANCE

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 5, 7 January 1916, Page 3

ROMANCE

OF A MAN WHO CHANGED H'JS NAME. LOVE AFFAIR THAT LASTED FORTY SIX YEARS. A romance story was told in the Probate Court yesterday, when a document executed by Miss Eliza Bick- ; ford, of Cambridge street, Hyde Park, who left about £13,000, was pro- ■ nounced to be a valid will.

Mr. William Guernsey, a grey-haired old man, claimed to be executor of the will. It was stated that when he

was very young he was convicted of ■ assault, and, believing the conviction improper, he left his native place, Gloucester, took the name of James Harvey, and eventually made a fortune in Birmingham and Londo.n as

a jeweller. In 1868 he met Miss Bickford, an extremely handsome girl, then in the employ of Colonel Cross, a brother of Lord Cross. They lived together fo 46 years with the greatest happiness. They never married, although several times they decided to do so. All their investments and property were in Miss Bickford’s name, and they bought the house in which they lived in Cambridge street. The document, of which the Court granted probate, was as follows: “All his profits he handed to me for safe custody. We invested the same. We have invested 75 per cent of aT dividends, and have lived like poor people, riding in penny ’buses, - without any help for ten years in the house. Hence the accumulation of Jame £ . Harvey Guernsey’s fortune. “Verbally everything has been mutual between us. What was his was mine in case of his death, and vice versa. I feel I am passing away. I do ask my very dear friend, James Harvey Guernsey, to give a certain sum to our King and Queen Mary, to St .Mary’s Hospital, Praed street, Paddington, and also' 3 'to think of relatives on both sides, including my

doctor and nurse. “My dear Jim hag comforted me Wy | saying (Enos Emanuel Wheeler and his wife, Emily Wheeler, and Albert Harding and his wife, Alice Catherine Harding, I hope will be specially thought of. They visited me almost to my last moment.” Mr. Guernsey said that Miss Bickford signed! (this document with a cross when she was on her deathbed in August, 1914.