Inside tragic story of lottery winner who scooped £7.6MILLION & gave a fortune away to charity…. before tragedy struck
BRITAIN’S most charitable Lottery winner gave nearly all of her fortune away before tragedy struck.
Barbara Wragg, 77, died of sepsis on Monday after an operation to remove gallstones.
She and husband Ray, 80, bagged a whopping £7.6 million on the National Lottery in 2000 – but ended up giving over 70 percent of it away.
Paying tribute on Wednesday, Ray said his wife “didn’t deserve” to have her life cut short.
The dad-of-three told: “It is so very sad because Barbara, who has given so much to the NHS, both working for them and charitable donations, didn’t deserve this.
“She was so kind and caring. She was naturally like that, even before the lottery win.”
The pair, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, lived in a £10,000 council house and lived a modest life never living beyond their means or even leaving the country for holidays.
They played the lottery every week, choosing five lines and picked numbers at random from registration plates.
But their life changed forever on January 22, 2000, when their numbers 7, 9, 10, 40, 41 and 44 netted them the jackpot.
Within weeks the pair decided to hand most of the fortune away for the betterment of local people.
Family, friends, kids, hospitals and 17 charities all benefitted from their extraordinary generosity over two decades, MailOnline reported.
Their kindness saw them donate an MRI and bladder scanner to two hospitals and they also bought 30 TV sets so each child in a local hospice could watch telly in bed.
And every Christmas for six years they took 250 disadvantaged kids from an inner city school for a day out and picked up the bill.
They even paid for 50 broke war heroes to visit Italy for the 60th anniversary of the battle of Monte Cassino in 2004.
At the time, Barbara said: “I look at it this way – £7.6million is too much for one couple in the 50s and 60s to spend.
“You get a buzz. It’s like when you give somebody a Christmas present and you watch them open it and they think it’s absolutely wonderful.
“Well, when we’ve given people money we get that all the time.”
But the couple didn’t go without some luxuries, quickly moving to a £415,000 home with a bay window – Barbara’s dream feature.
The South Yorkshire natives also snapped up a Range Rover.
And they went on their first foreign trips – cruises around the Med and Caribbean – having holidayed in Cornwall for 31 years straight.
Though they never flew as Barbara had claustrophobia.
But recent years saw Barbara’s health decline rapidly, with Ray admitting the family have been through “hell”.
She went into Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, for an operation to remove gall stones last week, but she never came out.
Tragic Barbara succumbed to sepsis surrounded by Ray and their kids: Mark, 54, Shaun, 48, and Amanda, 44.
Reflecting on their life, Ray said: “Winning the lottery changed our lives but not our persons.”