FROM THE ARCHIVES:A newspaper left behind by a fare led to fortune for a Dublin jarvey in the early 1920s.
MR WILLIAM Brown, the Dublin cabman, who has been declared the heir-at-law to an estate calculated to realise at least £30,000, takes his good luck with the Dublin jarvey’s philosophy. He was on his usual stand in Dame street yesterday, and as anxious as ever for a fare. Mr. Brown, who is 67 years of age, is a hale and robust old man and a typical Dublin jarvey in appearance and manner. He lives in Hatch lane, where his married daughter keeps house for him. The fortune of which he is the sole heir comes from his aunt, the late Mrs. Jane Isabella Lewis, who died in November, 1904, at an advanced age. This remarkable woman was the daughter of a farmer from outside Cootehill, Co. Cavan.
Jane Brown went to London, and eventually became housekeeper to Mr. John Harvey Lewis, a gentleman of considerable means and M.P. For Marleybone. He was an Irishman, but resident in London. Part of his property consisted of a number of houses in Kilcullen, County Kildare, with farms in the vicinity; farms in Clonee, County Meath, and valuable head rents derived from both localities. He also had a villa at Monte Carlo [and] house property in Manor street and Stephen street, in the city of Dublin.
In 1861 Mr. Lewis married his housekeeper. They had no children, and by his will Mr. Lewis bequeathed all his property absolutely to his wife. He predeceased her by many years, and shortly before her death she made the will which has brought the affairs of the family before the public through the Dublin Courts. In that document, she made the mistake, so often made, of over-estimating what her property was worth.
[She] directed that all her property should pass in succession to each of [her husband’s] two nephews [for] his lifetime. On the death of the last survivor of the two, her general residuary estate and the proceeds of the sale of her real estate in Ireland was to go to trustees, to use £80,000 for the erection in Dublin of a hospital, to be named after her husband.
[The trustees] were faced with two difficulties, the first of which was that the estate would not provide anything like the £80,000 for the erection of a Harvey Lewis hospital.
The second difficulty was presented by the Charities (Procedure) Act of 1812, an Irish Act, under which a devise of land for charitable purposes in Ireland becomes void in the event of the death of the testator within three months from the making of the will. Mrs. Lewis did not live three months after the testamentary arrangement of her affairs.
Mr. Brown’s good luck came about almost by accident, for it was in an evening paper left behind in his cab that he first saw the notice inquiring for heirs of Mrs. Lewis. There was no difficulty in proving that he was heir-at-law, although many descendants of the Brown family put in claims from America and elsewhere.
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