Slot machines and Claribel items fetch thousands

The Marathon Cycle Race game sold for £6,300 at auction

Rare seaside slot machines have brought in more than double their estimated price at auction.

The collection went under the hammer at John Taylors Auction Rooms in Louth on Tuesday 12 March, with a total guide of £16,000.

However the 25 items sold for £40,000.

Auctioneer James Laverick said he was "absolutely delighted".

Among the haul was the Marathon Cycle Race, in which two players spin wheels to race cyclists around a track.

It was made in London in 1930 and it is believed fewer than 10 remain. That was sold for £6,300 - the most valuable item in the collection and way above the £1,500 guide price.

A Gypsy Fortune Teller machine sold for £5,200. Also attracting attention was a Green Ray Television slot machine, which brought in £4,500, which was £1,500 more than the £3,000 estimate.

Successful female songwriter

A monkey climbing game, made by R Wright & Son of Bridlington, brought in £4,200.

Also going under the hammer was memorabilia belonging to Victorian songwriter Charlotte Alington Barnard, known as Claribel.

She was the talented daughter of a Louth solicitor and became the most successful female songwriter of the 19th Century.

She amassed a fortune of £30,000 - or £4.5m in today's money. However, it was stolen by her father.

Mr Laverack said: “The highly respected solicitor Henry Alington Pye, a one-time county treasurer, turned out to have been systematically embezzling money from the county, his clients and his own daughter.

Auctioneer James Laverack with a portrait of Claribel as a young child

"The total amount involved was in excess of £100,000 (£15m in today’s money).

"Her father had not only cleaned her out but he had destroyed the family’s social standing.

"Overnight, Claribel, the songwriter with a vast circle of friends in the world of the arts, literature and high society, became Charlotte the daughter of the notorious swindler Henry Pye. Nobody wanted to know her."

The Claribel collection included a large oil painting of Charlotte as a young child, a second portrait depicting her at work on a composition and a journal that she used as a scrapbook, featuring signatures of some of the most famous people in Victorian England.

It was bought for a combined total of £4,000 by Louth Museum, ensuring it remains in her home town.

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