Topic: Wolseley Barracks
Gets a Fortune
Private in London, Ont., a Joint Heir to $145,000
Ottawa Citizen, 9 March 1908
London, Ont., March 5.—Unless by some vagary of disposition to remain in his present quarters, the dull routine and everyday discipline of the life of a regular in Wolseley Barracks will speedily come to a close for private Patrick Kirby.
$145000 Cdn in 1908 would be worth over $3 million in 2015
For a year Kirby, who is a young Englishman about 27 years of age, tall, muscular and well put up, with a clean open face, surmounted by a closely cropped head of brown hair, has drilled and dressed and marched and performed the ordinary duties of a common everyday soldier in the piping times of peace, and if he ever had any expectation that his father, a wealthy stationer in Warwick, by his death was to leave him co-heir to $145,000 he never mentioned it to his fellow red-coats, but immediately on receipt of the information that he had fallen into a fortune he made preparations to give the entire regiment a glorious blow out.
J.E. Lowe, a teller in the Dominion bank here, while looking over an old country paper yesterday noticed that owing to the death of their father in Warwick, England, two young brothers, Patrick and Albert Kirby, were the direct heirs to an approximate fortune of $145,000. The thought struck him that as the despatch stated that Patrick Kirby, the younger brother, was missing for over a year he might possibly be at Wolseley Barracks. Consequently, he communicated with Col. McDougall and upon looking up the rolls it was found that a private named Patrick Kirby had been enlisted for nearly a year. He was called into the colonel's office and speedily identified himself as the Patrick Kirby who was heir to a fortune. The news was noised about the barracks, and as Kirby is very popular among his fellow soldiers he was the object of much felicitation, and has made arrangement to entertain the entire regiment to a supper as soon as the first installment comes.
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