Wiktionary
n. Income from one's own assets resulting in no need for employment.
Wikipedia
Independent Means is a stage play written by Stanley Houghton, a leading member of the Manchester School of dramatists.
The play was Houghton's first professional full length play which was written in 1908. Its first title was The Unemployed, but this was changed to avoid confusion with a one-act play with a similar title. It was chosen by Annie Horniman to open the second season at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, on 30 August 1909. It was an immediate success and was chosen to open the next two seasons, and it was published in 1911. It was broadcast by Granada Television in 1960. Otherwise the play remained unknown until it was "discovered" in the British Library by Chris Honer, artistic director of the Library Theatre, Manchester. It was decided to produce the play at the Library Theatre in 2008 to celebrate the centenary of the Gaiety Theatre.
Usage examples of "independent means".
He was a prosperous, well-fed young bachelor of independent means.
Life is very hard for the poor, and for a young woman to marry well it is important that she have independent means.
Now if we bear in mind the numerous points of structure having no relation to expression, in which all the races of man closely agree, and then add to them the numerous points, some of the highest importance and many of the most trifling value, on which the movements of expression directly or indirectly depend, it seems to me improbable in the highest degree that so much similarity, or rather identity of structure, could have been acquired by independent means.
Maggie explained that Liysa was a woman of independent means who traveled all over the Pacific Islands taking photographs on important assignments.
You are traveling in Sybarite class with a personal allowance suitable to an heiress of independent means.
The knight then was a mounted warrior, a man of rank, or in the service and maintenance of some man of rank, generally possessing some independent means of support, but often relying mainly on the gratitude of those whom he served for the supply of his wants, and often, no doubt, resorting to the means which power confers on its possessor.