Gustave Dron

Gustave Dron (born in 1846 with Marcoing - died in 1930 with Tourcoing) was doctor and a politician tourquennois. As a Mayor of Tourcoing, there remained famous for its social action and the rise which he could give to his city, then with the apogee of its industrial economic power.

Mandates

Very popular by its devotion to the population tourquennoise as a doctor, he becomes city council man about 1890.

Gustave Dron is elected radical Maire of Tourcoing in 1899 following the death of its predecessor Victor Hassebroucq. Re-elected in 1905 and 1911, he remains mayor during the First World War and is made prisoner by the Germans in 1918. Released after the armistice of November 11th, 1918, he resigns in 1919.

He is again elected Maire and Senator of Tourcoing in 1925.

He dies in functions in 1930.

Political action and social

Gustave Dron, doctor of trade, were moved by the impoverishment of Tourcoing, and especially by the strong infant mortality. It launched a policy of assistance and local development without precedent: creation of the Welfare office (1894), of the Farm of Burgundy (of more than one hundred of hectares; held for the mother's milk), of the Sanatorium in 1907 (current Dron Hospital), Shooting range (1905, Belfry and Chamber of commerce (1906, it makes vote by the Municipal council the obligation for the schoolboys tourquennois to go to the swimming pool to learn how to swim and finally, dedication of its career (and the industrial power of Tourcoing), the Textile International exhibition of 1906, where the President of the Republic, Armand Fallières, comes to inaugurate the new Station and the international houses. It creates in 1912 the Union Post Scolaire of Tourcoing, original association " having for goal to join together in a solid beam all the groupings created in order to develop public school works perished and post with the state education scolaire". This association always exists with the same objective.

During the First World War

In 1914, the war bursts again between the France and the Germany. The population tourquennoise is mobilized, the men leave to the face, but Tourcoing is occupied by the enemy in November 1914. Gustave Dron is obliged to enter in relation to the occupant but is made any possible sound to block the requirements of the Germans and to protect the populations from the exactions of the enemy. It cannot unfortunately prevent the plundering of the factories and textile industries of the city, and certain arbitrary executions.

Its resistance to the orders of the occupying forces is worth to him to be stopped and sent to the bottom of a jail German. One afflicts the same fate to a hundred notable tourquennois, of which the director of the Free Institution of the Sacred Heart, the Leleu canon, with the difference that those are not imprisoned but are not off-set in Lithuania.

It is released after the armistice and is acclaimed by Tourquennois on its return in 1919, in company of Georges Clémenceau.

The years 1920

Gustave Dron, having resigned in 1919 (following health issues) is re-elected Senator-Mayor of Tourcoing in 1925. He dies in functions in 1930.

In its honor, Tourquennois raised a statue hones some (on pedestal and plank describing its life, the whole reaching approximately five meters height) with its effigy, as well as the creation of a grand boulevard Art déco uniting the station with the downtown area in 1935.

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