DEATH IN GAOL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 9

DEATH IN GAOL.

FRENCH ADVENTURESS

Infamous Swindles of Mme

Hanau Recalled.

RUINED THOUSANDS,

'(United P.A.—Elcctric Telegraph—Copyright)

(Keccivcd 11.30 a.m.) PARIS, July 10

Following an attempted suicide Madame Ilanau, who was involved in tlio infamous "Gazette du Franc" scandal in ID3O, which ruined thousands of people, died in the infirmary of Fresnes gaol. She was 50 years of age.

After serving succcssivc terms of imprisonment slio had. occupied a carpeted, book-lined cell like a lawyer's office in Sante prison, from which a lady's maid, by duping two warders, assisted her to escape from a window by means of knotted blankets. Later she gave herself up. The governor dismissed the warders and placed Madame Hanau in Mata Ilari's former cell.

Though hunger strikes and a motor accident impaired her health, she founded two Jinancial papers while on bail. Her last sentence was one of three years, imposed in 1934.

Iler divorced husband and ex-partner, M. Bloch, died last year.

Madame Marthe Hanau, daughter o£ a Parisian draper, had one of the most amazing financial careers ever recorded in France. Even as a girl she was clever and persuasive at business. While helping her mother to run a linen shop in 19U(i she met and married Lazare Bloch, an industrial agent. He later became a commercial traveller, while she started a scent shop. The latter prospered, and she sold it after a motor accident. The buyer failed a month later. Her next move was to exploit the war by selling what she called the "soldiers' tube," supposed to contain a mixture of rum and coffee. This was considered a swindle, and she and her husband were lined several times. In 1919 she started a soap business which failed.

Then Madame Hanau met the wealthy Madame .Joseph, and her career as a financier began. In 1920 Madame Hanau obtained a divorce, and resumed her maiden name, but tliey remained friends and business partners. Financed by Madame Joseph, the woman started the financial paper '"Gazette du l'ranc" in 1925, making a great parade of its disinterestedness. Its avowed aim was to save the franc, to rehabilitate French credit and currency. Its actual purpose was to induce the public to buy the shares which were being sold by Madame Hanau's "bucket shop." She was able by protestations of patriotic motives to induce well known men to write financial articles for the paper. Then she founded the "Gazette des Nations," which proclaimed its intention of working for universal jieace. Deauville and Montmartre. Leading statesmen all over the world gave interviews for the good of the cause, and under cover of their distinguished names more customers for the "bucket shop" were to be recruited, as Madame Hanau clearly indicated in a circular to her provincial agents. A tremendous worker, she rose early, but even in office ] hours was a great consumer of champagne and cigarettes. Later in the day she and Madame Joseph frequented the bars and night restaurants of Montmartre, gambled at Deauville and were joint hostesses at lavish entertainments.

Late in 1928 the crash came. According to one version, it was precipitated by Madame Hanau's quarrel with Madame Joseph, who withdrew from the business. Another story was that the great banks took action to stop an issue by her of eight per cent debentures to the value of £1.360,000. A prospect of 40 per ccnt profit was held out, and the issue was to be followed by another of the same amount. According to herself she was being blackmailed, and it was because she at last refused to pay any more that brought about the collapse of the "Gazette" and her arrest. In February, 1930, her blackmailer was given four years' imprisonment. The result of the crash was that Madame Hanau's clients appeared to have lost many millions of francs, and several of them committed suicide. Madame Hanau, however, denied that she was insolvent, declaring that her assets, including her private fortune, were £1,640.000, while her liabilities were only £1,360,000. It was possible, she said, for her to pay her creditors 100 per cent, I but only if the inquiry into the affair, I which had lasted well over a year, was I promptly completed. Otherwise they would get only 50 or 60 per cent.

Sensational Hunger Strike. It came out at the inquiry that Madame Ilanau had subsidised various papers to boom her business, and that she had offered "Le Journal" £8000 and a £120,000 share if it would stop its campaign against her —an offer indignantly refused. In February, 1930, when the legal proceedings were entering their fifteenth month, Madame Hanau began a hunger strike as a protest against the law's delays and the magistrate's refusal to consider her demand for the revision of the figures of the financial experts, whom, she said, she had already convicted of grave miscalculations. As a result of the hunger strike the woman became so weak that she had to bo sent to an infirmary. There she was forcibly fed until she escaped from the institution, only to give herself up again almost immediately.

Then she made an application for release on bail, and when she was granted a hearing she ceased hunger striking. On March 29. 1930, the Court granted her bail in £6400 Once free, Madame Hanau faced 1000 shareholders in her bankrupt concerns and persuaded them, to the accompaniment of cheers, to give her five years in which to right the situation. She promised to repay in full the capital invested. Thunderous applause from the people who had believed Madame Hanau's previous promises greeted this statement, not withstand ins the fact that the liabilities of the "Gazette du Franc" were estimated at £1,250,000.