POVERTY TO AFFLUENCE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 446, 31 May 1937, Page 3

POVERTY TO AFFLUENCE

RESIDENT OF MELBOURNE Earning 30/- A Week Melbourne, May 20. The heir to a fortune is still working in Melbourne as a casual labourer for a preedrions 30/- a week. He does not intend to leave his job until he has safely in his keeping the money which will keep him in affluence for the rest of his life.

Mr. William Vernon Wilson., aged 68 years, is the central figure in this story-book romance ot a Poor man suddenly succeeding to riches under the will of a forgotten relatlvei In the past 10 or 12 years Mr. Wilson has had to battle so hard for a bare living that he is finding it difficult to realise that he will no longer have to scrape for every meal and exhaust declining strength in heavy manual labour to win enough 'to pay for the rent of his room, which coats him 5/a week.

Three separate legacies have come to Mr. Wilson from descendants of Lieutenant Thomas James, who died in Cornwall many years ago. Mr. Wilson has satisfied the Melbourne agents for the executors that he is the rightful heir. He will leave Melbourne as soon as the solicitors here can arrange his passage, but he will not receive his legacies until he has satisfied the London executors of the estate that he is the rightful claimant. Six other beneficiaries under wills of relatives of Lieutenant James have been located near Alice Springs (Central Australia), but the amounts Rft to them are small. The only inkling that Mr. Wilson has given of whS't he will do with his fortune has been a meagre explanation to a friend of plana for new suits of clothes, a comfortable lodg-ing-house and a modest round! of entertainments in London. The only change that prospective wealth has brought to him so far is that he will, not So hungry ajjain, he hl bal kinii

so many times in the past. Should weather or accident prevent him from carrying out his casual round of stables work or moving heavy packages in Melbourne warehouses, the solicitors who found him in poverty here will see that he does not want. But in the meantime Mr Wilson is still- on the job at 30s a week, and he is still living in his ill. furnished 5/a week room in a cheap lodging house.