Conference misery::feline_v1

1360.0. "Five million dollar bequest to RSPCA" by HUMOR::EPPES (Make 'em laugh) Thu May 12 1988 00:26

From the Nashua Telegraph, May 11, 1988:


    			$5m bequeathed to animal charity

    LONDON (AP) - An 80-year-old widow who lived with her cat willed over
    $5 million to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
    Animals, the charity said today.
       Dorothy Walker, who died in December, bequeathed her entire estate
    to the charity in her will, published Monday.
       The donation is the biggest the charity has received since it was
    founded in 1824, said charity spokeswoman Diana Jones.
       The widow, who reportedly had a few distant relatives but no
    children, lived with her tomcat, Pussy, in the west London suburb
    of Richmond.
       "She often said she preferred animals to people and she was deter-
    mined to prove it to the very last," Walker's former housekeeper, Linda
    Havelal, 70, was quoted as saying in London's Today newspaper.
       Walker's lawyer, Mark Prest, reportedly said in London's Daily
    Telegraph that the widow left no special instructions concerning the
    cat's welfare.
       The housekeeper said she is looking after the cat until a permanent
    home can be found.
       He said that most of Walker's money came from properties she and
    her husband owned in the Richmond area, where they lived since World
    War II.
       The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said it
    received its second-biggest donation in 1985, when an English woman
    living in Switzerland left the charity her estate, then worth $2.2
    million.

    I had heard at one of our Humane Society meetings that the
    SPCA in London was the richest in the world - and I can
    see why - with bequeaths like that. Interestingly -
    the second richest SPCA is the Massachusetts SPCA. It is
    the richest in the USA and is a distant second to the 
    London (RSPCA).