“BLACK JUNO’S VICTORY.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3742, 15 January 1907, Page 3

“BLACK JUNO’S VICTORY.”

American Negress wins a Fortune of £137,000. The sensational act of Mr J. R. Platt, an eighty - seven- year-old financier, to compel Mrs Hannah Elias, a negress, to return ,£137,000 in cash, which he declared had been extorted by blackmail has finally been decided by the Court of Appeal in New York in favour of Mrs Elias. The Platt family have spent a small fortune in the effort to recover this money. They have appealed successively against adverse verdicts in the lower courts, but the present decision will probably end the litigation, which has been dragging on for years.

Mrs Elias otherwise known as “Black Juno,” is a full-blooded negress about 40 years old, and was at one time very beautiful. She first met Mr Platt 20 years ago, when she was a dancer in r place of low entertainment. The negress is now worth ,£200,000, and owns four houses said to have cost £BO,OOO. All of them were presents from Mr Platt. Mrs Elias lives in magnificent style, and keeps many servants. She is said to have tried innumerable “washes ” for bleaching*'her skin and taking the kinks out of her woolly hair, in order that she might enter “ better society.”