Manci Howard, Lady Howard of Effingham

Maria Malvina Howard, Lady Howard of Effingham née Gertler (born 26 December 1912, date of death unknown) was the first wife of Lord Howard of Effingham (later the 6th Earl of Effingham), eldest son of the 5th Earl of Effingham, interned for several months as a threat to Britain's security during the Second World War. She was described by Lord Cottenham of MI5 as "highly sexed". She used a Hungarian diminutive of Maria: "Manci".

Biography

She was born Maria Malvina Gertler in Budapest, the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, which then formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Like the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklós Horthy, she was a member of the Protestant minority in Hungary. A file prepared by MI5 suggested that she was of Jewish descent. Her father had acquired Polish citizenship after Poland regained its independence in 1918, and she subsequently obtained a Polish passport on which it was stated that she was born in 1908.

She married Lord Howard of Effingham in 1938. The head of the counter-espionage section of MI5, Captain, later Major, Maxwell Knight, described the union as a "purely business arrangement", providing her with British nationality and a title, and Lord Howard of Effingham with money.

The money came from to her from her lover, Édouard Stanislaus Weisblat, also known as Edward Stanislas Weisblatt, a Polish Jew who was married to a Russian and who was alleged to have made his fortune selling boats to the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War.

The files reveal that Lord Cottenham, of MI5, who met her once over a few drinks, described her as "a not unattractive Gypsy gamin type; highly sexed, I should say". She called him "the Professor".

As early as 1938 Stewart Menzies, soon to head MI6, reported that he had been told that Lady Howard of Effingham was "suspected of being a spy" by the staff of Antoine's, a hairdresser in London, and that she was seen perusing a "secret report" while at that establishment. The suspicion, the report added, "is apparently based on her general behaviour".

With appropriate euphemism, MI5 alleged that she was on "familiar terms" with Ivan Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador, on "affectionate and intimate terms" with the Turkish Ambassador, while seeing "a considerable amount" of the Egyptian Envoy in London, Nushet Pasha. One of her "closest friendships" was said to be with Habib Lotfallah, a Christian businessman. Her contacts included a Major Mitchell (an officer at the War Office) and Randolph Churchill's Hungarian cook.

Despite having no evidence against Lady Howard of Effingham, the files show how Maxwell Knight pursued her. Major Knight reported that "our latest information ... points to the fact that she may well be employed directly or indirectly by the Germans". According to Knight, the French security service had warned MI5 that Weisblat was "in contact" with Otto Wolf, a German charterer and arms dealer in The Netherlands, who was believed to be in contact with German intelligence. It was also believed that he was, at the same time, a French agent and an agent for Soviet intelligence.

Weisblat resided in the French Republic and had French citizenship. The Vichy government stripped him of his French citizenship. He escaped to Portugal and then to Brazil. There was evidence that he had contacts with the Soviet intelligence service, but the USSR became an ally of the UK after the German invasion in 1941. MI5 received information from a "Spanish source" that a "Gestapo agent" called "Edouard Weisblat" would leave Portugal and attempt to enter the USA from Brazil.

Lord Swinton, head of the Home Office Security Executive, described her as "clearly a most undesirable woman against whom a Deportation Order would certainly be made if she were not married to an Englishman".

Lady Howard of Effingham was interned in February 1941 on the grounds that she was involved in the "preparation of acts prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm" and held in Holloway prison. She appealed, declaring: "There is nothing I would not do for this country." She was released three months later following the recommendation of the Home Office's Advisory Committee to Consider Appeals Against Orders of Internment, chaired by Norman Birkett, KC, as the information was insufficient to satisfy the Home Secretary of the requirements laid down in the regulations. She divorced Lord Howard of Effingham (who succeeded as 6th Earl of Effingham shortly afterwards) in 1945 and travelled to Brazil (where her new partner, a Brazilian diplomat, lived) and Australia (where her new partner had been posted), attempting to raise funds in Brazil and Australia to send food parcels to Britain. She left Australia and is believed to have married the Brazilian diplomat, who was posted to Sweden.

She was sometimes confused with her stepmother-in-law, Madeleine, Countess of Effingham, the US-born second wife of the 5th Earl of Effingham.

Notes

In her Polish passport she stated that she was born in 1908, but in her application for a British passport she stated that she was born in 1912. Before the Home Office's Advisory Committee to Consider Appeals Against Orders of Internment she stated that she was born in 1912 and that the year in her Polish passport was false.

Bibliography

• Gerald Firth, Lady Howard, Spy, London, 2007 (no imprint): published after the creation of this entry, is a careful and complete selection of the important material available, with a commentary which is more accurate than the recent sensational, but inaccurate, newspaper accounts. Published by LULU.COM

External links

• Penniless 'spy' who slept her way to the top (with picture) [1]
• [2]
• Files in the (British) National Archives:[3]
• Files in National Archives of Australia on "Countess of Effingham": [4]

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