A shipowner's widow reportedly tore up a will leaving her £1 million, inherited about £5.5 million, and died without a will of her own

Fanny Lucy Radmall married Sir Robert Houston, a director of the Houston shipping lines, on 12 December 1924^†. Wikipedia reports that when he showed her his will, she tore it up, saying £1 million was not enough^†. He died aboard her yacht Liberty on 14 April 1926, leaving her about £5.5 million^†. He had believed he was being poisoned^†. She took up residence in Jersey and, without admitting liability for death duties, negotiated a payment of £1.6 million with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill^†. She spent the fortune on causes of her own. In 1931 she gave £100,000 so Britain could compete for the Schneider Trophy, and in 1933 she paid for the first flight over Mount Everest^†. From 1933 she owned the Saturday Review, a Conservative weekly, and ran it largely from the Liberty, which had belonged to Joseph Pulitzer. Its circulation peaked at about 50,000. She attacked Baldwin, Eden and Hoare and praised Mussolini and Hitler. She died in December 1936. Time reported that no will was found, and her editors announced the end of her "dictatorship" over the paper. The Liberty was later sold for scrap.