The times., 1898-08-11
. 7O5-7-9-ff Pa, Ave.
!.
THE FOUR HUNDRED SHOCKED.
Mrs. Wi1merding's Old Associates
Aghast Over Her Confessions

oNtE tOn1tSS1cnS
New York, Aug. 10.-Whatever Mrs.
Jack" Wilmerding hoped to accomplish
by her remarkable disclosures concern
ing her life and habits. the society in
which she was born and once moved, q
handsome. accomplished. courted woman,
Is aghast at her.
The commission inquiring into her san
ity-is to make its report next Tuesday.
after a visit to her in her quarters in
Bloomlngdale Asylum. And from now un-
I'll that time the members of the commits
sion Will have for reflection and con-
temptation the narrative of Mrs. Wilmer
dings life, related by her.
From the time OF her marriage to
Jack Wlmerding. in March of 1892, her
days were, according to her own state
ment. constantly occupied with dissipa-
ton She drank to excess; a quart of
whisky day was habitually consumed
by her. She smoked to excess, forty Gig
arettes day She confessed TO all these
things and to others yesterday in the
White Plains Court House
And today fashionable society. the So
ciety to which Mrs. Jack Wilmerding
was reared. is confronted with the spec
tacle of one OF its deIicately reared young
women confessing TO such depravities as
men who kill themselves.
From the day of her birth twenty-sev-
en- years ago, Marie Fatimah Allen Will
merding was nurtured and surrounded
with all the care that wealth could law
ism upon her. She was educated to take
that place in the inner society of New
York to which her position as a great
granddaughter of old Commodore Wander
Wilt entitled her. American French and
English schools contributed to her ac-
complishments, and she grew from dainty.
prim girlhood to maidenhood, and thence
to a womanhood. endowed with beauty,
| grace and wit
| Then came her marriage, a great society
| event. for Jack Wilmerding was one
of the distinctly eligible young men"
Now she is in Bloomingdale Asylum for
| the Insane. and the road by which she
reached it is marked by milestones of dis
| sipation and self-indulgence. She took
| the road after her marriage, she said.
| and she reientlessly blamed her husband
! -or her plight. She left him after five
years of married life, and gave herself up
to the cravings for drink and tobacco that
| had come into her brain.
| Three years ago she threw off whatever
! restraint she had placed upon her abnor-
NAL appettes and drank TO excess.
| My husband started me in the habit.
| anu lily lEOGDIeS utON0 iilt 10 COHllLut IT.
| she told the court.
| While Mrs. Jack Wilmerding's father,
| the late Col Vanderbilt. was dying of
| dropsy in Capri, she drank and smoked
| from morning to night. 1t was French
| brandy she said. and she was always eX-
| act as to what she drank.
! But it was not only after marriage that
she took strong drink. She did so before
marriage, she said. although never to any
| terrible extent"
| 1t was doubtless difficult for many in
the court room yesterday to believe the
| words that came from Mrs. Wilmerding's 5
| lips. With perfect composure, if a trifie
| of bitterness, she related every act of her
| life in which she had violated the tradi-
| tions of her society, the tenets of the peo-
pie with whom her youthful lines had
| been cast
But with her head jauntily tossed aside
| she told how her father had drunk with
her and smoked with her.
When this craving for drink was upon
her she readily found companions to clink
| glasses with her. She had her portrait
painted by a cousin to the physician who
had attended her father.
He drank with her, quantities of IL
quors." she said, and it seemed as if she
sought to hide something, to keep the
worst back, when she added that they
affected her strangely.
During her remarkable disclosure Mrs
Wilmerding seemed to pay little heed to
what she said and what emotion was
visible in her tones came when she spoke
| of the husband whom she claimed had
| beaten her. For all that her manner con
| veyed she might have been telling o1
events of an uninteresting, monotonou:
life. not one so varied, so awful in self
| accusation.
Then, too, this pretty, delicate woman
| accustomed but to express whim t
have it gratified, told of her beggins
search for money. From friend to frient
she went, asking for loan, few hun
| dred dollars. And when each in turn hat
| refused, she sold for $500 cash about 800,
900 worth of property.