from The Mirror THE hunchbacked old man cut a sad, lonely figure as he shuffled at a snail's pace down the high street. People would stare in pity as the 86-year-old made his arduous daily journey to the supermarket to beg for stale bread and rotten fruit. Dressed in a tattered raincoat and wearing a pair of old trainers on his bare feet, no one imagined William Allsebrook had a penny to his name. But the truth was that the reclusive pensioner led an amazing double life as a savvy wheeler dealer and jet-setter - overseeing a near- £2 million fortune. While he flogged fruit at the gates of his dilapidated home to raise a few pennies, inside he would buy and sell stocks and shares with the experience of a hard-nosed trader. He was said to have made a killing from "carpet bagging" building societies in the 1990s and rumour has it he buried thousands of gold Krugerrand coins in his back garden. Advertisement Yet he spent none of it and lived a pauper's life, even accepting the charity of neighbours who would bake cakes or tend his garden. The true extent of Mr Allsebrook's wealth was only revealed this week, after his will was published following his death in a blaze that gutted his squalid home two years ago. It is still not known where the bulk of his £1,980,000 fortune will go, although £50,000 has been handed to the local Tory Party. But today, the Mirror can reveal the amazing story of the eccentric recluse who, up until the day he died, was taking a language course and computer classes to help him make even more money. RESIDENTS of Borrowash, near Derby, are still shocked to discover that the man they'd see scavenging in litter bins was, in fact, their richest inhabitant. Yesterday, they remembered how he would refuse offers of lifts, beg for cast-offs and discounts, and never look anyone in the eye. Inside his home, Mr Allsebrook, a former industrial chemist with a doctorate degree, lived amid squalor in a rubbish-strewn single room. Despite repeated requests from social workers to improve the property, he had refused to tidy up or buy a new gas cooker. The man who knew Mr Allsebrook best was George "Tinker" Taylor, 70, who lived with him briefly many years ago. He remembers: "I've never known such a mean man in all my life. I often had to nail metal bottoms on his shoes because he refused to buy new ones. "The most generous thing he ever did for me was offer me breakfast one day - a piece of toast and half a sardine! "He refused to drink water from the tap because he didn't want to pay water rates, so he pulled it up from a dirty well in his shed. "And instead of taking a bath, he'd walk six miles to the nearest swimming pool for a free dip. "I'd collect porridge for him from the cheapest shop, where he'd blagged a 10p discount. I'd also cut his hair because he didn't want to pay a hairdresser. "After his mother died, he walked all the way to Derby with her fur coat to flog it. "He got a few pence but when he got home he realised he'd lost the money on the way. So he walked all the way back to Derby to look for it. Every two or three weeks he'd travel abroad. He didn't tell me why and I never knew what he was up to. Now it seems it was some get-rich-quick scheme. "All I knew was he'd come back from France with stale baguettes that he'd crush and mix with his porridge. He'd spend all day sitting around that house, locked in that dark, filthy living room doing God knows - what." Neighbourhood Watch organiser Derek Martin was one of the few people Mr Allsebrook allowed in. "I had to go there from time to time when there had been a breakin on the street," he said. "I was shocked when I first saw the state of his house. My wife felt sorry for him and used to bake him cakes for me to take round. We felt we were doing our good deed by helping someone worse off than ourselves." The only person Mr Allsebrook confided in about his financial affairs was neighbour and fellow investor Keith Shepherd. HE says: "Mr Allsebrook was a very shrewd investor. He used to trade on the stock market but always reinvested his dividends. "He was an expert at 'carpet bagging' - putting his cash into building societies that were going to demutualise. I know he made a fortune out of Cheltenham & Gloucester and Bradford & Bingley. He led a completely double life. He'd fly off to Geneva, Berlin and Marseilles, where he had investments. Yet here, he walked around looking like a tramp. "He once said to me, 'I'm going off to Berlin to have a bath', because it was the only time he ever washed. "He was always talking to me about the Krugerrands he'd bought. Now there's a popular myth that he buried thousands of them. "The only relative he had was a cousin but he didn't have anything to do with her. He'd say: 'No one's getting a penny. When I die, I'll give it all to Maggie Thatcher.'" William Eric Allsebrook was born in Derby, on March 7, 1918. An only child whose father owned a publishing business, he never married and lived with his parents until they died. An intelligent youngster, he graduated with a doctorate degree in chemistry and commuted to London to work as an industrial chemist. People who knew him say he doted on his mother, who died 30 years ago. LIVING on his own for the first time, Mr Allsebrook began neglecting the £250,000 house he'd inherited. He retreated into his living room, where he lived, slept and ate. Sitting in a tattered armchair and using an oldfashioned phone, he dabbled in the stock market and amassed his cash. But Mr Allsebrook refused to invest in a new cooker, instead heating up food on a primitive electric heater in front of his chair. And instead of sweeping the room, he covered the carpets with newspapers. It was this neglect that spelled tragedy. On the evening of April 13, 2004, William Allsebrook filled a saucepan with vegetables and turned his heater on its side. Minutes later, the house was ablaze as sparks set fire to the scattered papers. Firemen found the old man dead in his chair from smoke inhalation. The house was a shrine to his mother and there were also boxes of bank statement and records of the investments that had made him a millionaire. Now he has gone and his double life finally revealed, one question remains - who is the lucky recipient of Mr Allsebrook's secret fortune?
I think its a bit sad cant take it with him - £2million and too mean to pay for mains water a cooker decent food clothes etc I wonder if he was happy?