Family seeks High Court orders over Queen Victoria fruit bowl

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Marie Ryan sought High Court orders restraining Michael Carroll from dissipating proceeds of any sale of a fruit bowl associated with Queen Victoria, or €30,000 alleged to have been removed from a joint Irish bank account. The proceedings were reported on 27 July 2015. The case was returned to Wednesday, July 29.

The report said counsel alleged that Michael Carroll had taken the bowl and withdrawn the €30,000. Court documents also recorded his account: in a text to his sister Marie Ryan, he said he last saw the bowl containing trifle in the fridge of the family home in Athlone, Co. Westmeath.

The report said Marie Ryan found letters under the bed used by Michael Carroll showing correspondence with Sotheby’s. The letters stated that the family of the Duke of Devonshire did not want the bowl sold at auction and had offered £100,000 to acquire it. Further correspondence from Permanent TSB suggested that £100,000 had been received from Sotheby’s.

Mary Elsie Carroll bought the bowl at an English market while working in Britain in the post-war years, later bringing it to Athlone and using it for salads. She died in 2011, leaving her estate to be divided between her seven children. The report described the bowl as specially commissioned by Queen Victoria and valued at a minimum of £80,000; it also gave a valuation of about €113,000. The £100,000 correspondence concerned an offer to acquire it.

This report covers an earlier stage of the case. Later developments are not reported here.