The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette from Fort Wayne, Indiana • Page 1

DAY MAGAZINE SUNDAY, JUNE 9, 19J8. v. he Tainted Millions me. Restell Once More They Crop Up in a Legacy Contest, Reviving the ralSf! Gruesome Story of Mrs. Sum mers Lohman's Lucrative New York Career, Ending in 1878 With Her Arrest.

ffiH immmsFiMTi'mm Herts and nsSHfHBtilaNHEa liUiff mKsJrrM potions tvcli 3lSIHiV ILBkWsa ZJlkW as chemists KV'ROJBHBHR9HBHR''JtlB and witch. 'HirfylBJlaiCjB women of old X'HjVWBmmlofelHPsllE trafficked In." T. Al fliiB By EDWARD H. SMITH. SOME part of the tnUUooa left to her descendants by Mme.

Restell are again to come to court. Prcbablj there are Tow persons now alive In Mow York to 'whom this announcement can mean much. But to those who knew the old town, forty years ego the mere mention of the name ot (this woman this Mme Restell "will convey enough. In her day she was the core of a case as notorious as the Thaw and Becker affairs of more recent times Once her name was on every lip, her likeness familiar to every newspaper reader In her time the whole town bhook with excitement over the termination ot the affair In which she waa involved and finally the cut the Oordlan knot of her own misdeeds by. dramatic suicide, 'With the passing ot four decades the name and evil deeds ot Mme.

Res tell have sunk quite out of popular consciousness. Now attention to them Is to revive, as It often revives through this quarrel over her money, William Purdy Shannon, a great grandson ot Mme Restell, was killed in a hunting accident in 1916 leaving a twill In which, he disposed of his Inheritance about $500 000, without taking into account his father, "William Plckell Shannon. The dispossessed father Is suing to break the will, and Thomas Moore an attorney of Brooklyn, N. Is authority for the an nouncement that the matter will shortly come before the Appellate Division in Brooklyn The question whether Mr. Shannon has a right to some of his sons legacy this money come do through Lad 111 iwas par itlis land.

irt PUD' OUS Res lining Ctexy. kr.lstv i.ag Mvlil.ntlv Madam practice were kept for disposal. It ii at this lanctnrs that the more start i seen I for Mm Rsitell his mother from Mme. Restell faas, to be sure, nothing to do with the publics interest in the matter. Neither need either side to the controversy care, at this late date, about the ores of the orlglnM fortune Sufficient unto the generation are the crimes thereof.

But the story of Mme Restell will perhaps he worth retell ing. And more than that. It Is a tact that her deeds and misdeeds still ex ercise an inStuence on present day morality Mme Restell, a servant In her birth' place Trow, England, came to America some time before 1830 and married a man named Charles Summers, who died In the cholera epidemic of 1831 After this man death his widow lived over a small apothecary shop In that part of the modern Park Row, New York, then called Chatham Street. Summers came to know this man of herbs and potions, and tromhhn She learned the fundamentals of an art that was afterward to stvnd her In good or evil stead The pharmacist was interested in the produc tion ot herbs and potions such as the alchemists and witch women of much older centuries trafficked in Not the potable gold that was to restore vanished youth, not the philosophers stone to transmute btse metals in'o gold, not even the nf titrations of hot spice and heavy perfume that were to compel love, did this man seek What excited this apothecary had to do with the Illegal medical practices which are prescribed by the statute those who are interested In curl ous insights Into histories.) events it may not be amiss to say that the practice of these selfsame arts was what during the Renaissance caused men to brand certain women of the time as witches and to punish them with cleansing fire. Pei haps because such things particularly concern her sex, the Widow Summers learned quickly whatever lore the man ot the pestle had to share with her.

for by 1833 or 1831 she, was already engaged In transmitting the benefits of her knowledge to others. It was In 1334 too that the widow re tnaifledL Her choice was one Charles Lohman, a printer employed on a newspaper. Lohman, It appears, was Just a good, ink' fingered, hard drinking fellow of the sort common In bis profession, in that distant day But bis wife Judged be had possibilities, and so he had In fact Lohman quit his case for medicine After i repoi ther 1 1 ex md a little preliminary equipping, gained mostly under the direction ot bis wife. he hung out his Bhingle as Dr Mau receau, specialist. The shingle grew to a banner, the banner to a blazonry Br.

dealt only with the troubles ot men and so venally did he deal that before he died the city was In arms against him. It was to curb Dr. Maureceau and his legion imitators that subsequent and now operative laws were placed on the books But while the husband was piling ujp afor'une in this way, his wife was not idle Sh was early associated as "Mme Restell' with a certain Mme Coetello But before many years tfhe rid herself of this partner and began to operate tor herself For half generation she bad her hospitals at various downtown locations and her evil notoriety waxed with the years Various attempts to curb her all failed Indeed the attacks on her forted bxjnoral an.jeform societies. seemed only to advertise ber and swell her business, so that In the early '70s she was able to take a fine bouse tit it up with all the paraphernalia of her dark art and to live In a state as Impertinent as it was grotesque When Mrs. Lohman or Mme Res tell as sho mas universally called drove out.

It was In the equipage ot some court charmer, with four horses. a postilion, a groom and perhaps third servant, all In blithest livery. A good part New York laugncd at this servant girl regality Another large part dared not She knew Its secrets But laugh or do ber rever ence Mme Restell did not care. Sho had hr lady maid dream and ber establishment was making money There were repeated rumors of crime and near crime from her place. There were repeated attacks on hr In the newspapers There were demands the clergy that her In famies be abated There were efforts by reform societies to reach and punish her.

The police tried to stamp her out Mme Restell smiled and went the even tenor ot her four tn hand. But. in the late '70s there began to be seen aboat New York a youngish, good sized, pink faced man, with ferreting eyes and mutton chop whiskers as his chief claims to passing notice He was one Anthony Corn stock, secretary ot the Society for the Suppression of Vice of New York City. Neither Mr Comstock nor his society bad been able to get much attention up to that time They existed. and some persons had actually been made aware ot It Beyond that, noth' ing But on the night of April 8.

187S. a date not without historical Import snee, this intrusive Comstock leaped to a sudden famouslty He and some policemen forced the doors of Mme. Restell place found a complete non maternity hospital within raided all Tbero6mS setied some prisoners and took Mme Restell to JaiL, At last some one had dared to do what other had only wished for, Tbls Comstock was at once a great feljow, and be was destined to be a greater. The whole town was excited about fi.J0 sum 4 S5.Vi mwRwmai Vs Wi.lii T4i 3 fMESflBifi! sv m. JEtW.

wKT wiV asifisrv I 4 Hy I W5 Aft3St Mfji iiv rfX sy 4 ffyi3 Countess de Bryas, ONE WILLING WAR VICTIM. j. LTHOUQH the war deprlvfctj Madeline de Bryas, called one at taa four most beautiful women in Trance of the life that ttas hers by right of wealth and social position, it has not learned ber ardor Ipour la patrie" Dau titer el a French Aristocrat, she on the threshold of ll'e when the outbreak of tie war end (d her social careers. For nearly tour years she baa been oaring tor unfortunates la the devastated districts ot Francs working as a fc. Al' fM' itffWW :4 urse a large part ot the Iflme.

Now she is la Aroi tea at the instance of tfaa Trench Gorernmtat, to tell ot her work and to Interest wealthy Aai Icans In it Iter exquisite jbionda loveliness has baa much to do with her success here, for she is ona ot (be yfi rreatest French beauties ho baa visited JLmerlcL. JI a ES2 sr 'J. 5ViW htoS tfLOj the retell raid Persons who bad beea Qu womai clients flew together In agrtated groups. Men and women trentlel befort the 'peril of exposure Mom. Kcstell was threatened and wanted to ba Discreet It was paid as It is alwarsaald, that persona Slga In tfcs soriil sale were Involved.

Th metis belli eved, sis it will always be lie Tii4er such circumstances, that at least a dozen of the first women of the JLrtaiia btad been caught in th rail 1 beliere a wealthy butcher daiiHe ws Wtually there, But, that as It nay. New York was qiukxl with He affair, jlal tbls excKement was nothing to what followed llae T0wd filch choked the court room om the mo rnlng of Mme. Reitell's trli4 via to experience actual drama. Wleilwr cans was called, Mme. Res tell did pot appear There was a lay, scurrying of attorneys, anotl delay Then Orlando L.

Stewart at tarney for the womank hurried late court and stood before the bench lie said limply and clearly that his famcTii client was dead. Sensation! She had killed hereelt hi ber bathroom at 2 clock tkai cnorzlDg by slashing her throat wLtl a breatiknlfe. Consternation' If there had been rumors, hiits. brullngs before now there was ojts talk. Whom had she died to protectf Had she not really beeqi murdered for fear sbe would speak the truth sad Involve others I need not go ot enumerating ths wild conjectures As a mitter ot fact, this woman ot sev enty having had her servants sat her coach amd four, bad probably lumtmed up that she had done pretty well for a British kitchen maid and concluded that the tight wasa worth Che candle Nevertheless her case continued to ba celebrated and mysterious to tb4 common.

Aal long as eleven years later, in 1889, one New York nes paper printed a three column article fiercely asserting that Mme, Restell was alive In Paris A physician nameless In the article, asserted that bo bad seen and attended hei1 In both cities The tale was that another woman having convenient? died the night before the trial a patient In the Restell emporium ber body was slashed to look like that of a sulcldo and palmed off on the coroner as that ot Mme Restell, while the old a Itch herself made a hasty exit from the country Thus this woman seized i from Oscar Wilde that transcedence of the tomb lmnosed UDon bis sad 1A iMAnM.pfn, nm. MU VIV Tbe "Woman sleeps, and "whether since 1878 or some later year does not matter, But things she did continue to be Important to New York. I have 4 said that the raid ot her place was the thing that brought Anthony Com 1 stock, Into brilliant notice. The Res tell suicide and all the scandal and sensation surrounding the whole in i cldent did more than that tor him. It was as a result ot the Restell case thati the New York Legislature passed a number of lews dealing with her profession, with medical quackery an' with moral topics generally.

It wa these laws which Indirectly put lnt the hands of Comstock the pows which be wielded for many year after, and which remains In the hand, ot his vice bunting society. Koro Una points ot KSSltli's rsai ox pry re, jiv pgiBcmni orera uuors ui rauc sj tn perieuee with the emeen ot taelawBow Jy ink" fingered, Restell place found a complete non ff Z' hardHlrtnklng fellow maternity bosplUl within rsldedall J. vnlisd. hen ths news be of the sort common setied some prisoners and jW jl H. JLn Jt Wf te an A AonwnrthatMioo.XUsMlwasarrudJ In bis profession 4n took Mme Bestell to JsU, CJS ksf iVlskTm Mk lKl JR.

QD m. 38 raided, wild that dUtant day But At last some one bad dared to do A VC rW 2. sss. flh sAtXWiki f7 sA 9S VajSil Ms wife judged be what otberfc had only wished for. OK rJfCWj ml5: 4MmW (3 uuf had possibilities, and Tbls Comstock was at once a great jp dwMbKF AKW Vlp tlV SE so he had In fact feljow, and be was destined to be a ail 4ll svBQsV i A JJTf TliB'ssM Contemporary newspaper portrait of "Mine.

Lohman quit his case greater. MBBC1I Bf 11 II Jj lMNPI 1 I ii Bestell" (1878.) for medicine After The whole town was excited about Sgti I MI SS SS Jl wrvV J1.