Mary Raine Story, The: From Putney to Perth (Signed by Author)

Mary “Ma” Raine was the eldest of 13 children, she was born in the 1870s in Putney, London, and died 80 years later in Perth, leaving millions to medical research. Along the way, a lifetime spent running hotels and doing real estate deals embroiled her in enough adventures to keep a scriptwriter gainfully employed.Mary came to Australia with her sister Daisy in 1900, with £100 between them. They worked as barmaids in Queensland, Sydney and outback New South Wales. Although they planned to return to England, as destiny would have it, Perth was to become the home of Mary Raine where she settled into a life of buying up property and managing hotels.At one stage Mary owned most of the properties on William Street in the Perth Central Business District and five hotels. She went on to amass a fortune built on shrewd investments, hard work and confidence in herself.Owner of Perth’s Wentworth Hotel, upon her death in 1960 Mary Raine bequeathed her estate, worth in the region of 1,000,000 pounds, to the University of Western Australia for the formation of a medical research foundation. #0918R/0319/0419/0120 pp. x, 207 illusts Signed by Author