When a woman found the perfect place to rent, she was ecstatic, and for over two decades, she lived in the home that she loved. Then, her landlord passed away, changing her life as she knew it.
Jane Sayner, an elderly woman in her 70’s, once dreamed of finding a home with a garden in Melbourne, Australia. When she was 51, that dream came true while she was hunting for a house to rent. That’s when she spotted a two-bedroom unit with a garden in St Albans, a suburb just north-west of Melbourne. It looked just perfect for her. Thankfully, she was approved and began renting the home from a man named John Perrett.
For the next 22 years, Jane worked hard to make ends meet. She would pay her landlord $200 a week, always on time and often in cash, just like John had asked, according to A Current Affair. Even at 74 years old, she would wake at 3 o’clock in the morning to go to Epping, where she worked at a market. Thankfully, Jane’s rent never increased, allowing her to maintain the residence for decades, Newsner reported.
Although Jane had to work hard, she never regretted moving into the neighborhood. However, it didn’t seem that she had considered what might happen when her landlord, who was even older than her, would eventually pass away. Thankfully, John Perrett, who is the definition of generous and thoughtful, had a plan.
John, who was a community man at heart, a pharmacist, a football player, a property investor, and a philanthropist, had quietly amassed a multi-million-dollar fortune before moving into a nursing home while battling Parkinson’s disease. With his health declining, John decided to get his affairs in order. That’s when Jane Sayner received an unexpected call from her landlord and his lawyer that changed her life.
“I got a phone call from him one day and he said, ‘I want you to talk to my solicitor, he is here at the moment, and can you give him your full name because I’m leaving you the unit,'” Jane recalled. Of course, she was shocked and admitted that the incident left her pinching herself in disbelief. “[I] still sometimes think, ‘did this really happen?'” she said.
Much to her surprise, Jane Sayner had inherited the property from her generous landlord when he passed after he decided to allow his faithful tenant to keep the home without having to pay a penny more. Jane wasn’t the only one to benefit from John Perrett’s generosity either.
In fact, John had donated the bulk of his fortune — a whopping $19.6 million of it — to the Royal Melbourne Hospital’s nephrology department, where he had received a kidney transplant some three decades prior.
“Words can almost never describe how unselfish and incredibly generous [John Perrett is],” Professor Nigel Toussiant from the Royal Melbourne Hospital said. “We are extremely grateful as a department of the hospital at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for such a bequest. It’s just amazing,” he continued.
“That kidney transplant lasted 30-plus years, and it was still functioning when he passed away in his mid-80s,” Professor Toussiant added, speaking of Perrett’s prior surgery at the hospital. “That was a life-saving gift, I guess, to take him off dialysis and he was obviously grateful for the care that he received, for all the doctors and nursing and medical staff to look after him at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.”
Although John Perrett passed away in September 2020 at the age of 86, he will not soon be forgotten since his record donation to the Royal Melbourne Hospital was invested and is expected to support the hospital and its patients for decades to come.
As for his last act of kindness to his tenant of over two decades, Jane Sayner is forever grateful. “I thank him still, every day of my life … just privately, I say, ‘thanks John,'” she said. And, she has every reason to be thankful to him. John’s generosity allowed Jane to finally retire, living up the rest of her life rent-free in her beloved garden, thanks to her landlord’s kindness.
