Own Home Is Lost By "Home Mender"

1920 (Click graphic for bigger)

MRS. DANIEL F. SULLIVAN AND HER WAIFS.

Don't for a moment think that the babies in the arms of Mrs. Daniel F. Sullivan in the above picture are all the "family" of "waifs" she has adopted. No, no! These are just all she could hold of the scores of infants she has made happy in her luxurious home. But now Mrs. Sullivan faces the loss of that home thru the alleged desertion of her husband. She is suing for divorce and alimony on those grounds.

WOMEN WHO HELPED WAIFS DESERTED BY MATE.

Is Now Alone After Having Helped Needy of City for Three Years.

One, who for three years has made the homes of others bright and cheerful, today finds herself without a home.

Hungry urchins and needy families came to her when in distress and found solace and food.

And now Mrs. Daniel L. Sullivan of Chicago has lost her own home in the process.

She established the fact when she filed action for divorce against her wealthy husband, who was first interested in her charitable project and then bored to distraction and desertion.

It was in seeking for a suitable memorial for her son, McKenzie Lowndes, that Mrs. Sullivan decided to bring the suffering children of poor parents into the beautiful Sullivan home in Chicago. She began with five and there were times when she had fifty.

She Made Them Happy.

They were fed, dressed well, given toys and medical attention and when they were quite happy Mrs. Sullivan usually took steps to return them to their own home, made materially comfortable for their home-coming.

Mrs. Sullivan began plans to make it a permanent institution, encouraged by thousands of letters commending her work or thanking her for priceless aid to individuals. Her husband was worth nearly a half million dollars, the home was ideally located and fitted for the charity and the routine of "trouble seeking" had been established. Families in misery knew where to apply.

Then, just as the organization was to be enlarged and the work amplified, Mrs. Sullivan received a telephone message from her husband to have dinner with him. She kept the appointment and waited for hours, but when she finally returned to her home she found a note pinned to her dresser in which Mr. Sullivan explained that he had left the house forever.

Three times thereafter Mr. Sullivan returned for brief visits, but for a year he has not even communicated with his wife.

Mr. Sullivan went away for the last time late in 1918.

Foundlings Brought Her Trouble.

Mrs. Sullivan states in her bill of particulars that she was married at Milwaukee, Aug. 21, 1911, and that for years she lived very happily with her husband. The beginning of their troubles came one year after Mrs. Sullivan had taken in the first foundling in the endeavor which subsequently made her known and loved thruout the poor sections of the city.

The plan for making the memorial a charity on a great scale has failed with the absence of Mr. Sullivan, but "the mender of broken homes" is still active in a limited sphere along the same lines proposed at the time of her own problem's development.

In her action Mrs. Sullivan will ask substantial alimony, contending that her husband is worth at least $300,000 and has an income of not less than $30,000 a year.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 4.

The Errors of Society

1901

The dark blots that divorce makes in society are too easily seen and too sad to write much about, so I will give only a few incidents of the absurd and humiliating positions in which people may be placed:

I once occupied a seat on the grand stand at the Newport Casino during a tennis match. After I had been in my seat a short time, a man I knew, once divorced, but remarried, came in with his new wife and occupied the two seats on my left, and a few moments later the woman from whom he had been divorced and who had also remarried came in with her new husband and sat directly on my right.

Whether the ticket agent arranged this for a joke I am not prepared to say, but all went well until I grew tired of the game and got up, leaving the four in a straight row, which made an interesting picture for a few moments. The four soon realized, however, what people were staring and smiling at, and, looking daggers at one another, immediately rose and disappeared in the crowd. The incident amused the lads and misses very much.

A lady I know very well in New York, who was giving a dinner party, told me she always dreaded the arranging of her guests at her tables, lest she put people together whom the "law had set apart," as she put it. "It would be perfectly dreadful to seat a gentleman beside a lady to whom he is paying alimony." — Smart Set.

Adept at Marriage Game: Five Days, She's Gone, Wants Money

1910

Judge Scores Woman

Says She Has Been In Game Long Enough to Be Adept.

WASHINGTON, Ind., Feb. 17. — In granting a divorce to Ephraim Hogshead, a wealthy farmer, today upon a cross-complaint, Judge Houghton took occasion to score Mrs. Hogshead, who, before her marriage, moved in local social circles.

"It appears to me," said the judge, "that there has been an attempt on the part of the woman to hold up Hogshead. I doubt whether she could have recovered a penny against him. This has been her third appearance in my court in suits to disentangle matrimonial alliances and evidently she has played the game long enough to have become an adept."

Mrs. Hogshead's complaint asked for divorce and maintenance. The cross-complaint set forth sensational allegations. The Hogsheads lived together but five days when the wife drove to the city, tied the rig in a hitch-lot and telephoned her husband she would not return home.

—Indianapolis Star, Feb. 18, 1910, p. 5.

Mate Took Food Sent to Lepers, Woman Charges

Oakland, California, 1921

Charging that her husband, Arthur Meyer, head gardener at the county hospital, insisted on eating choice foods reserved for the members of the leper colony and that when she refused to give him the delicacies he cursed her and called her a "crazy fool," Mrs. Cora Myers, former matron of the county hospital leper colony, today filed suit for divorce.

She alleges that shortly after their marriage last January 11, her husband insisted on eating the food provided for the lepers. She says that when she told him he could not take the edibles from these stricken people he abused her so severely that she was taken ill. She further charges that Myers then went to the superintendent of the hospital and caused her to be discharged by stating that she was a trouble maker.

Mrs. Meyers alleges that after she had been removed to a room in San Leandro her husband came to the place and raised such a row that she was forced to leave. She asks $75 a month alimony, attorney fees and costs of action, together with a restraining order preventing Meyer from disposing of his wages. The couple separated March 26, 1921.

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, May 19, 1921, page 24.

Wife Offers to Pay Alimony to Husband

1920—

Wife Offers to Pay Alimony to Husband

All She Asks Is Divorce and Custody of Children

SAN FRANCISCO, Cal., May 20. – Mrs. Ida May Harp, of this city, established a precedent in local divorce courts when she filed suit against Arthur E. Harp, an insurance adjuster, and offered in her complaint to pay him $25 a month alimony.

Mrs. Harp charges that Harp has been cruel to her. They were married in Napa in 1905 and separated recently when, says Mrs. Harp, he told her he was sorry he married her and that he wished himself in the "hot place" instead.

Harp also is jealous, she says, and refused to let her attend church, saying if she did she might flirt with the minister. He also was jealous of tradesmen.

Mrs. Harp asks for a divorce and the custody of their two children.


Women Are Inferior, Avers One of Them

LONDON, England, May 20. – "Women do not excel in any art. I do not personally know of any woman qualified to be an associate of the Royal Academy of Arts. Women have never been good in any art."

That is the opinion of Lady Scott, the sculptress and widow of the explorer, in discussing the fact that it is more than 150 years since a woman became a member of the academy.

Asked why she thought women fail at art, Lady Scott said:

"I don't know. We are an inferior race, I suppose."

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 4.

Mother Seeks $10,000/Year for Boy of 12

Chicago, 1920
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ASKS $10,000 A YEAR FOR BOY OF 12

Mother Says He Can't Live on $350 a Month

Owing to the mounting price of knickerbockers and school books, ice cream cones and footballs -- not to mention countless other things dear to boyish hearts -- $10,000 a year is necessary to educate and support Henry Irving Wheeler, 12 years old, son of the late Professor Henry Lord Wheeler of Yale University, according to a bill filed in the Superior Court.

The bill was filed by Mrs. Eva S. Lind, Henry's mother, against the Continental and Commercial Trust and Savings Bank of Chicago, trustee of a $400,000 fund left for the boy by his father.

Mrs. Lind, who was Eva Swartout, an actress, was divorced from Professor Wheeler in 1906. She was awarded $100,000 alimony. Later she married a New York physician. She received nothing under the terms of the will.

According to the bill, the boy was allowed $150 and then $350 a month after his father's death, but Mrs. Lind has been forced to give $15,000 toward his support.

Professor Wheeler was a members of an old Chicago family, his father having been a pioneer traction magnate. His will directs that the boy be supported and educated "in accord with his birth and station in life."

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 1.