The Worthington advance., 1879-04-10

ARCHBISHOP PURCELL.

ARCHBISHOP PURCELL.
What Came from Paying Intorest-Money
Without Stint Until tho Hard Times Ar
rived-Father Edward Purcell1 Novel
style of Doing Banking Business-1nex-
trlcable Confusion Worse Confounded-
Three or Four Million Dollars Lost.
A recent Cincinnati letter to 4 New York
paper gives the first clear and intelligible
account of the financial disaster which has
overtaken the archbishop and his brother,
Edward Purcell. No one for q moment
attaches any taint of dishonesty to the
archbishop or his brother, but the case is
as severe, nevertheless. 1t is some forty-six
years since the archbishop went to Cincin-
natl.
/ So far as can, at this time, be definitely
ascertained, his financial operations did not
assume any importance until after his broth
er Edward was ordained priest, in 1888.
Up to that time he had been receiving some
deposits that were forced upon him, but had
not made any use of them, and paid no in
terest on them. He simply acted al their
custodian for the benefit of poor persons to
whom they belonged. He was poor then
as poor as any of his flock, almost-for he
had to borrow in the East the means where
with to travel to his bishopric, and, arriving
there, had to ask months of credit for the
simplest necessaries of life. TO his honor,
be it ever remembered, that Notwithstanding
the enormous sums of money unquestion-
ngly poured into his hands, there has never
been time since those early days of his
episcopacy when he was not just as poor as
he was then, except that he has been out of
debt.
At first the Rev. Father Edward Purcell
paid no interest but finally he began to pay
per cent. and at last per cent. on de-
posits. The payment of per cent. brought
a perfect torrent of money from those who
thought the church more safe than the
banks. The bishop bought q superb site
and erected truly magnificent cathedral
upon it, with plain but co,nmodious epis-
copal residence in its rear. What the cost
was nobody now knows, for Father Edward
simply paid ell the bills as they were pre-
sented, kept no accounts, and doesn't re- .
member much about that, or indeed about
anything else. But it could not have been
less than half million that was thus ex-
pended here. No needy, struggling conere-
cation appealed in vain to the
bishop for aid. Father Edwards money
bag was always open. Up on Mount Adams,
where the people were not able to build a
church for themselves, the bishop ordered
a handsome one for them, and Father Ed
ward paid its cost. The orphan asylums and
the institutions of the Sisters of Charity,
and convent up in Brown county all came
in for liberal shares of the bishops munifi-
cence through the Father Edward channel.
The bishop was in the position of chemist
engrossed in some important experiment,
who calls upon his assistant to fill certain
vessels with water, and dreams not of inter-
rupting his process to inquire whence the
water came.
Father Edward was all the time doing
things that looked like business. He was
receiving much money, paying interest ON it
in very practical seeming way, supplying
money in any needed amount for any charit-
able or religious purpose that met with the
bishops approval, buying real estate here
and there, in and about the city, often at ap-
parently good bargains, and investing money
in manufacturing and mercantile concerns.
But, as it now turns ont, much of the money
A0 ACSCAN0A 40 NoPooAt5 "CAt AuA.CuIALClS u
pay interest, and when required prin-
ipal of previous deposits: the loans aid
gifts made with the bishops approval brought
back no returns; the real estate purchased he
clung to when offered five times its value for
it-as, for instance, the old United States
bank property-and retained possession of
until it has deprecated below its original
cost to him; the business investments were
made, not to reap profit from already sue
cessful enterprises, but to save struggling
firms and individuals from failure.
Father Edward accumulated as little of
this worlds goods as his brother. Much as
he received and much rs he paid out, none
stuck to his fingers. He got the same salary
as the other priests attached to the cathedral
and the episcopal residence, $500 a year. He
had room in the episcopal residence, little,
if any, better than the average third-story
back room of a second-rate New York board
ing house. He pulled through the crisis of
1857, and oven saved certain banking inst-
tutions that were threatening collapse, for tho
people, frightened by the failures all about
them, rushed to him to deposit their money.
He never troubled himself to keep any book,
so that he could have had nothing approx
mating to an accurate idea of what he owed
or what was owing to him. Going upon
the wildly fallacious theory that everybody
meant honestly, he scarcely more thought Of
expecting security from those to whom he
lent money than he did of Civ
ing security to those who made
deposits with him. When a depositor
brought him money he snatched up the
handiest scrap of paper on bis desk and
noted down the date, amount, and name,
and that scrap was held as the depositor's u
certificate. When such a scrap was present.
ed for payment he unquestionably paid. and
when it was offered as the evidence of q
claim for interest, if the party producing it
did not want the money, he just dotted
down wherever there was clean spot on
the paper the amount of interest due. When
more money was deposited he marked lit
down as so much "paid in," and when money
| was draw he scribbled the entry as 80 much
"paid out" upon the same scrap of paper.
| In course of time these entries would come
| to cover the paper with zigzag, criss- cross,
| up -and-down, tangled lines of words and
figures in almost inextricabie confusion.
His handwriting was very irregular in its
degrees of eligibility, but at either its best
or worst could easily have been forged, and
he, having neither books nor mem
ory, would have paid unhesitatlngly forged
Is we'll az genuine certificate. It is, in.
deed, believed that he has lost considerable
sums in that way. Ten years ago most of
the older paper scrap certificates having
worn almost out, or been go covered by en-
tries that there was no room on them for any
more, he made reissue, figuring accounts
up to date, and to many of the depositors he
gave such little books as savings banks fur
nish to their patrons That spasm of sys-
tenn has played the mischief with all hope OF
ever disentangling his affairs far enough ia
find out what money he actually did receive,
and how much of the vast sum now due is
in point of fact accumulated and compoun.
ed interest. 1t must be remembered that be
had already been going on about thirty
years, in which time the Oldest deposits
had more than doubled themselves
twice over. But in the new is
sue of certificates there was