Henry Woodhouse (forger)
Henry Woodhouse was born Mario Terenzio Enrico Casalegno on June 24, 1884, in Turin, Italy.
He later pursued academics in France, Britain, Switzerland and Belgium, and studied languages, economics, sociology and aeronautics.
He began his career as an aviation writer under the nom de plume Henry Woodhouse, which he soon legally adopted.
He published articles in Collier's Weekly, McClure's, Metropolitan, The Independent, World's Work, and the New York Times.
In his articles Woodhouse prophesied the development and extensive use of aeroplanes by the US military, and later coordinated uses for all branches of the service in WWI.
He was awarded a $25,000 judgement against the famous 1927 movie Wings when the court found that the title was a copyright infringement against Woodhouse's intellectual property.
When other members of the Aero Club tried the same merger in 1922, he sued again, claiming that he held the proxy votes of 404 members—but he could not present their signatures in court when ordered to do so.
In 1920–1922, Woodhouse had a hand in forming of an oil syndicate, the Ottoman American Development Company, that - through his connection to admiral Colby M. Chester - gained rights to construct and operate a railroad from Anatolia and the Black Sea and to the exploitation of the oil fields of Mosul.
Woodhouse supported the French foreign policy, which wanted to return the defeated sultan to his throne to keep the Ottoman Empire together.
The authenticity of some of the Lanier Washington historical items, both sold through auction, and through the Woodhouse gallery, was later questioned and in some cases proven to be fraudulent.
In 1953–1958 Woodhouse was involved in a lawsuit with former employee Tamara Bourkoun, who claimed that she had worked in his galleries for 46 weeks and had not been paid.
Woodhouse claimed that her compensation was a tuition to the gallery's education courses and that she intended to become a fortune teller, which, at the time, was illegal in New York.
