HC Deb 15 April 1887 vol 313 c995
MR. E. ROBERTSON (Dundee)

asked the Secretary to the Treasury, If his attention has been called to a statement in The Daily News of 8th April, that— A working gardener at Luton yesterday received a cheque for £72,000, which he has just recovered from Chancery; to a statement which has appeared in various papers within the last 10 days, to the effect that the "Whaddon Fall Estates," valued at £3,000,000, "besides a fund in Chancery derived from accumulated rents and profits," are about to become the subject of a suit in Chancery, between persons claiming to be entitled under the will of a person who died in 1772; and, whether there is any foundation for either statement, so far as the Unclaimed Funds in Chancery are concerned?

SIR HERBERT MAXWELL (A LORD of the TREASURY) (Wigton)

(who replied) said, that with regard to the first paragraph of the Question, he was informed that no cheque for £72,000 had been recently issued from the Pay Office of the Supreme Court of Judicature in connection with any fund in Chancery. As to the second part of the Question, the Pay Office had no information as to the pending Chancery suits; but he had been referred by the solicitor to the owner of the Whaddon Hall Estate to a paragraph which was published at his instance in The Daily Chronicle of the 13th instant and in the other papers, stating that there was no action pending in relation to the title to the estate, and that no one could possibly sustain a claim to any portion, and expressing the editor's regret at having given currency to the report. He should add, with reference to the third paragraph of the Question, that the largest fund included in the list of unclaimed funds recently published amounted only to between £15,000 and £16,000.