Morning journal and courier., 1881-07-18
EzT NEW HAVEN, CONN. MONDAY MORNING. .IIY ls lss
goarnal allo Courier.
Monday Morning, July IS. 1881.
A CURIOUS LAWSUIT.

A
 One of the most curious lawsuits on record in this country is now pending in the Supe- rior Court for the county of Suffolk, in Massachusetts. The plaintiff is Lizzie M. Cannon of Boston, an infant, who sues by her father and next friend William H. Gan non. The defendants are the Rev. John H. Fleming, Roman Catholic priest, and Arch bishop John J. Williams. The plaintiffs declaration charges the defendants with 'tconspiracy'' to defraud and injure her.
 Lizzie M. Cannon, the plaintiff, is girl about fifteen years old and is the child of respectable parents, who have long lived in Boston. About three years ago, it is related, she began to be subject to occasional fits or frances, after coming out of which she would declare that she had been visited by the Blessed Virgin, who had made various reve- lations to her; that she had been taught hymns which she remembered and sang when forms and faces of many persons who had died before she was born, some of whom-a deceased brother especially-tal with her and gave her their names. It was while she was in one of these frances, in the fall of 1878, that the girls family, much disturb ed by her symptoms, sent for the Rev. Mir. Fleming, one of the defendants His visits, almost invariably made with some other priest, seemed to do the girl good. On one occasion when Father Fleming called upon the girl he found her in semi trance and holding in her hand two or three little dolls or images, at which she was gazing with an expression of intense devotion and affection. These images, some two inches long or less, were white, made of thick paper paper board, represented cherubs' heads and wings, and had the appearance of being stamped with die or cut Upon inquiry, the priest learned that these images or dolls had been found in Lizzie's work-box or among her playthings, and that the girl herself was fully possessed with the idea that they had been miraeulously sent to her by the Blessed Virgin. Father Fleming, disappearing, as it is understood, of the child's way of viewing or treating these images, prevailed upon her during the interview to give him one of them; the other, he asserts, was afterward given to ! him outright by the girls aunt. He carried l them about in his pocket, he says, for a ! W1i1o 6Au 1Os1 Iu0Al AIt6E u b4Au0 ' Father Fleming discontinued his visits, hay ing for some reason become dissatisfied with | the plaintiff or her family. MT. Cannon ! begged him to renew his visits, but l without success, and he thereupon ap- pealed to the archbishop. and good deal of correspondence took place, in some of which MT. Cannon in his daughters be- half, asked the Rev. MT. Fleming and the ! archbishop for the return of the images. Mir. Fleming refused compliance with these re- quests, alleged that he had lost the images, and was sustained by the archbishop in all his positions. The plaintiffs claim is that Father Fleming had no rightful possession of the images, or no such possession entitled him to retain or destroy them; that to her mind the figures had peculiar sacredness and value, and that the effect of her loss and of her consequent feeling of bereavement and outrage upon a peculiarly excitable mind and sensitive body was most pernicious. In- deed it is asserted by the plaintiffs family that the girl has scarcely spoken now for the better part of year,-in fact since it be- came evident that her images were not to be | restored to her.
 Able counsel have been retained on both sides, and it will be interesting to watch the ! progress and result of the trial. The case abounds in curious legal questions.