£8,000,000 FOR SAVING A GIRL

Taranaki Daily News, 30 July 1921, Page 10

£8,000,000 FOR SAVING A GIRL

CHICAGO CLERGYMAN’S WINDFALL. New York, May 8. Fifteen years after he had saved a girl from degradation the Rev. David Byrn, a Chicago clergyman, is about to be rewarded by inheriting a fortune estimated at * £8,000,000.

When a lay worker in Chicago, Mr. Byrne, whose name was then Kidd, was accosted in a slum by a young woman who asked him to buy her a drink. He offered to pray for her instead. She derided him, but sought him out a few hours later and asked him to offer up a prayer for her. He did so, and induced her to return to her parents. The girl’s father was an illiterate millionaire living in Florida. In the course of years he accumulated oil lands, grazing rights, and timber lands in many quarters. When he died two years later Mr. Kidd was bequeathed a quarter of his fortune on condition that he adopted the name of Byrne.

Other beneficiaries were the widow, daughter and son. The daughter had died some time previously and a codicil awarded her share of the estate to Mr. Kidd.

Mrs. Byrne and her son travelled ex* tensively after the father’s death. It appears certain that they were aboard the liner Empress of Ireland when she sank in the St. Lawrence River, Canada, in May, 1914, with the loss of 1000 lives. The bodies were never found.

Nexit ; Sunday the period which is required by law to elapse before permission to assume the death of a missing person is granted expires, and Mr. Byrne will enter into the inheritance of the whole family fortune. His first act will be to establish a rescue home for women and girls in Chicago at a cost of £500,000.