"At a time when over 300,000 people in Britain are without a home, we are incredibly grateful for the support we receive"
By Lee Mannion
LONDON, Jan 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The widow of infamous British aristocrat Lord Lucan, who vanished when suspected of the murder of the family nanny, has left her fortune to a housing charity.
Lady Veronica Lucan, who has three children, was estranged from her husband when nanny Sandra Rivett was murdered in 1974.
"At a time when over 300,000 people in Britain are without a home, we are incredibly grateful for the support we receive. The proceeds from Lady Lucan's estate will help Shelter to continue fighting bad housing and homelessness," said a spokesperson for the British charity.
Shelter said at the end of 2017 the number of homeless people in Britain had risen by 13,000 in a year. It said one in every 200 people in England are homeless.
Lord Lucan disappeared hours after nanny Sandra Rivett was found bludgeoned to death in his house in central London. A car he was using was later found on the south English coast with a length of lead piping.
It was alleged the peer had mistaken the nanny for his wife Veronica, who was also attacked and fled to a nearby pub covered in blood to raise the alarm. She later identified her husband as the assailant.
Lady Lucan was found dead at home in September last year. Her daughter Camilla Bingham revealed that her mother had left her estate, the value of which has not been reported, to the charity in an interview with the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
(Reporting by Lee Mannion @leemannion; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)
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