HEIRESS' ALLEGATION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18955, 4 March 1936, Page 9

HEIRESS' ALLEGATION

CRUELTY BY MOTHER SURGEON DEPENDS OPERATION SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 5. Widespread public interest has been aroused bv the. accusation of iss Aim Cooper Hewitt, in the pleadings of a suit she has brought, that her mother had an operation performed upon her to prevent her from bearing children and entering fully into her two-thirds share of her late father's £2,000,000 estate. The suit is against her mother, Mrs. MeCarter, and medical experts involved in the. affair. The authorities to-day ordered an investigation of the case to determine whether any criminal act has been committed. This will.be in the hands' of the deputy district attorney and a police inspector.. It is alleged that as a girl Miss Hewitt was forced into a closely guarded life of ignorance while her mother squandered large sums on gambling. One of the surgeons named in the suit, Dr. Tilton EL Tillman, to-day offered a spirited defence of the operation, which he acknowledged lie had advised and was party to. "I would have done the same thing had it been my own daughter." lie said. "Ann was feeble-minded. She was mentally a- child of 11.

"She"was not responsive to attempts to educate, her. J feel justified both from, the "moral and from the scientific .standpoints. It is an injustice to all concerned to permit the feeble-minded .io bring children into the world." £IBOO FEE Dr. Tillman declares that he has been -n close friend of the family for years, and only advised sterilisation, which is authorised under Californian law in cases of persons committed to homes for the weak-minded, after a whole year of careful personal observation. While admitting that Ann was never sent to a mental home, he maintains that this seldom happens when the family has sufficient means to pay for treatment in a private nursing home. He was indignant at the suggestion that the fee of £IBOO, which he and Dr. Samuel Boyd, who actually performed the operation, received was "exorbitant," pointing out that he had spent a great deal of time on the case. Miss Hewitt herself, in an interview to-day, told a harrowing tale of longcontinued ill-treatment of which she alleged she had been the. victim at the hands of her mother. "I have not received a formal education," she said, "but that is not my fault. I have always been prevented from having friends of my own age or doing anything that other girls in m.V position do." To-day -Mr. Russell Tyler, Mis!' Hewitt's lawyer, asserted the records of the hospital where the operation was performed showed signs of having been tampered with recently.