Scandalous Ladies: Scandalous Women, #2

By Anna Myers

Author and historian, Anna Myers, in this delightful short book, provides a gallery of extraordinary women swindlers, con artists and imposters. Some of the women you may even like, some will make you laugh and some you will despise.

MARTHE HANAU
'La Banquière'
POILLON SISTERS
Sisters you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night.
ELIZABETH BIGLEY
The Enterprising Mrs. Chadwick
THÉRÈSE  HUMBERT
ANN O'DELIA DISS DEBAR
"One of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known".
ANNA  SCHNEIDER
Too Many Husbands Spoil The Broth
ELLEN PECK
Just never wanted to retire!
BERTHA HEYMAN
"One of the smartest confidence women in America"
SARAH RACHEL RUSSELL
'The Beautician from Hell'
SARAH WILSON
Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz sister?
ANNA ANDERSON
Was she Czar Nicolas's II daughter ?
PRINCESS CARABOO
The greatest actress of all time!
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Goldmineguides.com
• Release date: Jan 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497714892

Anna Myers

Anna Myers     Anna Myers studied history at Sussex University in the UK. She currently lives in London with her husband Patrick and their three children.  

Book preview

MARTHE HANAU

‘La Banquière’

Marthe Hanau was born in the city of Lille, France in 1890. The family was Jewish, and her father a Paris industrialist. She grew into a bulbous, masculine woman of strong character who preferred women to men. For show, she married Lazare Bloch and together they founded a beauty cream manufacture. The firm was successful until World War I when their workforce was recruited to fight. Her marriage also ended at this time, although she and Lazare continued to be friends and business partners. In 1919, she and Lazare bought an ailing financial paper Gazette du Franc et des Nations, and they took advice from a civil servant, Piere Audibert. The gazette started well and prospered. However, Marthe Hanau wanted more.

Marthe used the paper to give out stock tips to speculators of finance and soon started using the paper to boost her own firms. These were vague operations, paper companies or shells with no specific product. Her writers, who were paid a great deal more than the average wage, promoted them all without hesitation. The value of her firm’s stock kept increasing as stockbrokers increasingly bought and sold them. She then set up an agency, Agence Interpresse, to rival the established Agence Havas which had, until then, held a monopoly on supplying financial news to France’s city pages.

With her agency filling the country’s city pages with ‘tips’ that had formerly been limited by the Gazette’s circulation, Marthe found that she could really expand. She issued bonds for short terms at eight percent to partake in a profit that might realize as high as forty percent. She promised to accept the shares of other companies as securities but once such shares were sent along, she promptly sold them.

Agence Havas realized what Hanau was up to. Banks began an investigation into her non-existent businesses and within a short space of time, there were many rumors about Marthe’s disreputable business practices. She fought off their investigations for a while by bribing obliging politicians and using her well placed friends but when the rumors reached the small investors, they started trying to withdraw their money.

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DESPITE FEARS THAT an arrest might well cripple the French economy, Marthe was arrested along with Lazare and other assistants in December 1928. Her assets were F31 million (then £250,000, $396,364), her debts F50 million (then £400,000, $634,188). As she waited fifteen months in her cell at St. Lazarre prison, she began a hunger-strike for twenty-two days. Marthe was then taken to Neuilly to the Cochi hospital. Here, she was force fed. Feeling recovered, Marthe clambered out of a hospital window and down her knotted sheets, leaving a note:

Disgusted by the violence to which I have been subjected I am leaving.

She walked straight back to St Lazarre prison.

Marthe Hanau protested that the court did not understand financial business and that the entire amount of money would be handed back. Later on in the trial, Marthe disclosed the identities of those politicians she’d bribed. This caused an enormous scandal throughout France. She was found guilty, but the sentence was a mild-two years in jail, most of which she had served, and a 300F fine. Lazare received eighteen months in prison. Other partners involved were spared prison but fined. By December of 1931, Marthe was free.

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IN APRIL OF 1932,