MILLIONAIRES WHO POSE AS PAUPERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 153, 24 July 1909, Page 4

MILLIONAIRES WHO POSE AS PAUPERS.

The world knows nothing of its . greatest men —nor of many of its , richest (remarks Pearson's Weekly). The names of John D. Rockefeller, An- ' drew Carnegie, J. Pierpont 'Morgan, William Waldorf Astor, and some few other exceedingly wealthy men—perhaps one dozen, all told—are household words everywhere. Circumstances havo conspired to render them so. But there are severalthousand other millionaires and multimillionaires alive at this present moment concerning whom nobody outside their own immediate circle of friends and acquaintances knows anything at all TOO SHABBY TO PAY UP. Men of immense possessions, their chief aim in life seems to be to conceal the fact -from everybody, and so well do they succeed that in many cases it only leaks out after they are dead. Thus, until the other day, not one person in one hundred thousand had ever heard of Charles Morrison. He neither smoked nor drank, cared nothing for amusement or the pleasures of soeiety, and spent only a few hundreds a year on his personal wants. Scant respect was paid to him. On one occasion he was refused a fly by a country innkeeper, who presumably thought, judging by his shabby appearance, that he would be unable' to afford the hire of it. Yet this plain, obscure individual, dying, left behind him a fortune variously estimated at from £10,000,000 to £15,000,000. DIDN'T OWN A HOUSE. Mr. "Chicago" Smith, who died a few years back in London, leaving behind him over £10,000,000. of which nearly £2,000,000 went to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the form of death | duties, lived even more unostentatiously, lie did not even own a house or relit chambers, but contented himself with a small bedroom, for which ho paid five shillings a week. His meals he took a! restaurants .or at his club. And there have been cases even of millionaires posing as paupers, and of others actually believing that thev really were such. The father of the Charles Morrison mentioned above, fur example, lived in mortal dread of dying in the workhouse. Yet he left behind him a fortune of £4,000,000.