Display of Dead Wife's Ashes Angers Former Ballplayer

1915

Mike Donlin Demands Revenge in Court

Mike Donlin, who forsook the New York National League baseball club for the stage, asked Magistrate Simms in a New York court to punish Ray E. Frye for alleged desecration of the ashes of Mabel Hite, Donlin's deceased wife, an actress, who died in 1912.

The former baseball star charged that the employees of Campbell's undertaking establishment were guilty of disorderly conduct by utilizing the urn containing the actress' ashes as a "prop" in a "press agent frame-up" staged one night recently at Murray's restaurant in New York.

According to the testimony of Jack Best, coat room boy at the cafe, Frye came in for supper on the night in question, and left the carefully wrapped urn in his care with the admonition that he "Be careful of it because it may explode." Visions of concealed bombs prompted the boy to tell Patrick Kyne, manager of the restaurant, what Frye had told him. The urn containing the ashes was placed in a bucket of water and the police notified. Detective Egan got it and found it harmless and returned it. In the meantime Frye had left the restaurant without Mabel Hite's ashes.

Magistrate Simms dismissed the defendant after hearing the full testimony. Frye said that he was taking the urn to a new repository where it was to be left until Donlin gave orders for its disposal and that he had forgotten it when he left after his supper. He admitted having told the coat boy that it might explode, but said that he had done so to insure better care of it. Donlin and Kyne nearly came to blows in the corridor of the courthouse after the case had been tried.