PLEA IN TRAGIC LETTER

Western Star, 29 November 1935, Page 4

PLEA IN TRAGIC LETTER

CALL FROM PRISON CELL. CLARENCE HATRY’S FATE. A remarkable letter from Clarence Hatry to the Marquess of in which lie makes a poignant heart cry! from the isolation of his prison cell, wa s revealed recently in London. ■ Hatry was sentenced to 14 years’ penal servitude in 1930 for huge financial frauds. In this letter to the man who' was chairman of several of his companies he tells of his anguish, intensified by the realisation that lie will be broken and crushed by the time he has served hid long sentence. What torments him most, he declares, is the thought that ho will never ba able to make restitution to thoso whom, lie brought tu ruin. “REGRETS SEEM EMPTY.” “If my sentence had been a reasons able one so that I could have started again—not broken or crushed—l might soon have made good your losses,” ho writes. ‘‘Now 1 can promise no such) thing. To express my grief and regrets seems so empty and futile and does not help.” This tragic letter was disclosed ini full by the Marquess of Winchester in his autobiography, ‘Statesmen, Financiers, and Felons,’ published in Fiance in September. The Marquess had written to Hatry reproaching him with duplicity. Hutry’s reply is characteristic.

“ALMOST INSANE.” “If you only knew it, no letter, •criticism, or abuse was needed to bring Jtpmp to m c in all its seriousness the full realisation of the effect of the ghastly failure to all concerned. Thisi last thought at times drives me almost insane, especially as I have all along 1 been convinced that had I been grants ed bail I could have saved so much from the wreckage , . . and even nowj epuld dp so much to help.” ) There was one occasion after Hatry! had become g convict thgt hp camel face to face with the marquess in the) law courts. He writes of this dramatic) meeting “You have never in you if life done a bigger or a kinder thing,! or given a fellow-creature greater pleasure than you gave me by your smilel and pot uukipd remarks when we met in the law courts as witnesses“l was overjoyed and at a loss to,

know what to say, especially as J was not alone. I think it only fair to you and to myself that some of the facts/ which it was not my policy to make) public at the trial, should be at • least) knowp to you personally. ” HOPELESSNESS QF POSITION. !! Then comes the final revelation in which H.wtiy admits the hopelessness of his position, ‘You will, I suppose, think it odd that J should have written at such length/ I and that seeing that lam condemned, ;to spend (to all intentg and purposes) 8 the remainder of my life in prison, I) a shunUl concern myself as to what people n say "j- think about me, 3 “As a general principle I have ceased | lo allow this aspect of things t<> tor-* 1 meat me. I do not, however, include! 0 j you in the general list. | ‘‘Luring our few years of association | my admiration. respect. and affectionate j regard grow fn r you. 1 am deeply and) terrible sorry. I wonder if by any sug8, gestionis even n<>W 1 could help.”