ROVER’S FORTUNE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1938, Page 7

ROVER’S FORTUNE

PROPOSED GIFT TO REDUCE NATIONAL DEBT.

Cast ashore at Bexhill, Sussex, when a baby, from an unknown foreign, ship wrecked in a storm, a man who later made and lost fortunes in Australia and South Africa, now wants to give his wealth, estimated at over £250,000 to reduce the National Debt, states a London message.

“I was thrown up on the shores of Britain without a penny,” he told Treasury officials whom he consulted on the subject. “When I die I want to be cremated and returned to the sea where the coastguards rescued me. “And I want to return as penniless as when I was cast up. That is why I wish anything I leave to be used to reduce the National Debt. I think that in my case it is the only decent thing to do.” He is 75-year-old Adrian Rogers, nick-named “Old Nep” or Neptune Rogers, by his friends. He was adopted by a lawyer of Hastings—a Mr Rogers—and when he grew up he'shipped as a lad to South America. There he met Colonel North, the “Nitrate King,” and at 30 had amassed ovfcr £20,000 by buying and selling nitrate concessions. He was forced to flee to Australia when the Chile revolution broke out and lost half his money in the Australian banks smash in 1891. Then, in South Africa, he met Rutherford Harris and Dr Jamieson, friends of Cecil Rhodes. He became rich during the Kaffir boom of 1895 onwards, only to lose most of his fortune in the South African war slump. Back in England, the rubber boom of 1908 brought him another pile. ’