GREAT BRITAIN: Bare Boards for Hatry

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GREAT BRITAIN

Bare Boards for Hatry

Norman Douglas, Aldous Huxley and many other famed Englishmen prefer living in Italy to living in England for climatic, artistic, economic, gastronomic and other reasons. John Gialdini, Anglo-Italian banker, former partner of super-swindler Clarence Charles Hatry (TIME, Oct. 21, et seq.) has one all sufficient reason for living in Italy: there is no criminal extradition treaty between Italy and Britain. Last week he was more than ever satisfied with his Italian domicile. His four former partners—pale and spectacular Clarence Hatry, stolid Albert Edward Tabor, colorless Edmund Daniels and Charles Graham Dixon—stood at the bar of Old Bailey to be sentenced for forgery, to wit: Swindling nearly $10,000,000 from the British public by borrowing money on forged municipal bonds.

Dramatically, elegant Norman Birkett, counsel for the defense, pleaded mercy for his clients. His cultivated voice tremulous with emotion, Barrister Birkett told how the rascally Gialdini (now in Italy) had evolved the entire scheme of the counterfeit bonds!

"Hatry was blinded by the enormity of the thing suggested by Gialdini, simply blinded! Gialdini declared that if his scheme were not adopted he would simply blow out his brains right there in Hatry's house."

The judge, grim-lipped Sir Horace Edmund Avory, pale and ascetic under his huge wig, was unimpressed. Addressing all four defendants he gazed fixedly at Clarence Hatry, the man who once owned the largest yacht and some of the fastest horses in Britain, whose Mayfair house contained not only a roof-garden swimming pool but also a subcellar bar and taproom labeled "Ye Old Stanhope Arms-Free House."

"You stand convicted," said Judge Avory, in a voice dry as burnt toast, "of one of the most appalling frauds which ever disfigured the commercial reputation of this country. I do not think there is much if any merit in your confessions which are nothing more or less than the threadbare plea of a clerk who robs his master and hopes to repay before his crime is discovered by backing winners at the races. Clarence Charles Hatry, I sentence you to 14 years in penal servitude."

The other Hatry defendants received sentences of from three to seven years. The bitterest blow to Swindler Hatry and his friends—that he has friends is shown by the fact that a number of them subscribed $95,000 to pay for his defense—was the fact that the first two years of the Hatry sentence must be spent at hard labor. The first two weeks of his sentence he must sleep on bare boards. For 28 days the man whose champagne suppers were the talk of Mayfair must crush rocks on the stonepile. After that he will be given the slightly less difficult task of making mail bags.

Most remarkable fact in the Hatry Swindle: members of the London stock exchange found it such a terrific blow to British confidence in securities of every kind that they formed a pool of over $5,000,000 partially to reimburse Hatry victims. These, naturally, had no legal claim whatsoever against the exchange.