Thérèse Humbert

When she had helped him with her smelling salts, the man told her he was an American millionaire named Robert Henry Crawford, and that he was eternally grateful and would reward her some day.

She moved to Paris with her husband and bought an elaborate house in Avenue de la Grande Armée.

In 1883, Le Matin newspaper published a skeptical article, but Humbert's father-in-law, who at the time was the minister of justice, supported her story.

When Jules Bizat, official for the French bank, asked Humbert how she had invested her money, she claimed that it was in government bonds.

Humbert had organized a generous pension plan she had named Rente Viagère to get more money and used it to pay her debts and buy bonds.

In 1901, Humbert's creditors sued her, and the next year the Parisian court gave an order that the fabled safe would be opened to prove the existence of the money.

Matisse's studio was searched by detectives, and his wife's family found themselves menaced by angry mobs of fraud victims.

[1] M. Parayre eventually went on hunger strike in an attempt to clear his name, with Matisse acting in lieu of a lawyer.

Her sister Marie, daughter Eve and deceased father-in-law, the justice minister Gustave Humbert, were stated to be victims of the fraud.

The article is written by Monsieur J. France who was one of the leading lights in the prosecution against Thérèse Humbert and who went to Madrid to take her back to Paris for trial.

One of these shows the door to a house in Paris and has underneath the note: 'Here, boulevard des Batignolles, lives to-day, she who was 'la Grande Thérèse'.

(Derrière ces fenêtres aux rideaux blancs, Thérèse Humbert médite sur son passé...)[3] Her husband died in 1936; he is not listed as a widower.