Story Stranger Than Fiction

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 6, 8 January 1936, Page 6

Story Stranger Than Fiction

Amazing Claim by Heiress

HEAVY DAMAGES SOUGHT

FROM MOTHER

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. Received Tuesday, 10.10 p.m. SAN FRANCISCO, Jau. 6.

Claiming that shu had been denied the right of motherhood by an illegal sterilisation operation, Ann Cooper Hewitt, a 21-ycar-old heiress, to-day tiled an amazing damages suit for 500,000 dolara against her mother, Mrs. Maryond Hewitt McCarter, an international society woman.

Claimant’s father, Peter Cooper Hewitt, the famous inventor, died in 1921, leaving an estate valued in excess of 10,000,000 dollars, two-thirds of which would revert to his wife if their daughter died without issue.

The daughter alleges that, under the pretence of having her appendix removed, her mother engaged two prominent physicians to perform a sterilisation operation for the sole purpose of diverting ihe major portion of tho estate to herself.

The physicians in question admitted that they performed the operation, but insisted that they did so because tho girl was feeble-minded und the mother felt that the bearing of children would be dangerous to her health and morals. This claim was denied by the girl’s attorney, who charges that the mother, despite a large income, denied the even the most commonplace necessities and luxuries, while squandering large sums herself on luxurious living and gambling, and that failure to give the child an adequate education, rather than mental incompetence, was responsible for her undeveloped mentality.

Oil her father’s side. Miss Hewitt is a descendant of a famous American family. Her great grand father, Peter Cooper, an industrialist known as “America’s first millionaire, ” founded the Cooper Union College, New York.