Threatened to Kill Herself

New York, 1895

If a Suit for Divorce Went to Trial in Queens County.

Lawyer Calvin applied to Justice Cullen of the supreme court one day last week to strike from the calendar the suit for absolute divorce brought by Charles P. Crowell against Lidie S. Crowell, formerly of Jamaica. The ground urged was that the wife was not ready to proceed to trial and that it had been stipulated by counsel appearing for her that some later date for hearing should be agreed upon. Mr. Crowell is a railroad man, representing a Southern transportation company in New York. In his suit he names Jacob R. Shipherd of Richmond Hill as co-respondent. He is a lawyer and a speculator now and was, at one time, a clergyman.

In addition to the divorce suit Mr. Crowell has also pending a suit against Shipherd for criminal conversation. There is still further litigation connected with the suit at bar. One is by Sadie T. Bennet against Hewlett J. Norris for $600 for services rendered, and another is by the same plaintiff against Shipherd for false imprisonment. In this latter suit a judgment for $2,239.39 was recovered, but the execution was returned unsatisfied.

Lawyer McKoon, in opposing the motion in the divorce suit, read an affidavit in which he deposed that it had been represented to him that Mrs. Crowell was in a condition of utter collapse through fear of the consequences of public exposure of the facts in the case which would follow a trial of the suit in court. In truth, counsel declared that she had even gone as far as to threaten that if the case ever came to trial in Long Island City she would take her own life rather than face it. It was out of sympathy for her, counsel said, that he had stipulated to try the case in another county and to accept $500 and discontinue the action for services and for false imprisonment, as the parties to those suits were all members of the family. But he said the other side had not kept faith and had not lived up to the terms of the stipulation. Accordingly he asked the court to retain the cause on the calendar for trial.

Judge Cullen set the case down for hearing in Queens county in June.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, April 12, 1895, p. 8.