The Savannah morning news., 1903-06-28
ONE W0MAN'S WAY.
From the Chicago Tribune.

you don't have to be successful
lawyer to make a good living out OF
the law" said a lawyer who keeps tab
on queer cases in connection with his
profession. IF you're smart enough
and devoid of scruples you can be a
professional litigant.
About nine years ago won a
breach OF promise suit for a woman
who had been a school teacher. The
defendant was an elderly contractor.
and we got $4,000 out of him. He was
a widower and. like a good many lone
some old men, he had been pretty mel
low in his correspondence with my
client, which won out for us. The
woman wasn't especially pretty. but
she was winsome and attractive.
We'll. that woman has been a prcfes-
sional litigant in the breach of promise
line ever since, and she has made her
self we'll off out of 1t. She has instit-
tuted more than a dozen breach of
promise suits, always against wealthy
and eldery men in large cities of the
United States, and she has won the
majority of her suits. l know these
things because, with a frankness as
naive as 1t was overwhelming, she told
them to me herself not long ago.
Calls 1T Her "Business."
She told me at the same time that
she had become so well TO do through
her breach of promise 'business'-she
called 1t that-that she had decided to
give 1t up and settle down. She is
still under 40 and as winsome and at
tractive as she was when l put her
first breach of promise suit through
for her.
II leave you to imagine my state OF
mingled feelings when, after telling
me of the remarkable success she had
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promise plaintiff all over the land, she
thanked and praised me as her 'bene-
factor the man who had pointed out
to her the road to fortune-it assur-
eddy made me feel, somehow, like an
accessory both before and after the
fact.
Her game must have been unimag-
inably easy from the way she describ-
ed 1t. Her story certainly went far
to convince me OF the truth of the adj
age that there's no fool like an old
fool She made speciality of trap
ping elderly men of means, widowers in
all cases. She so contrived matters as
to get her victims TO write many prom
SETTLED and affection-reeking letters
to her-such ink singers as the old
parties are to be sure was her art
less way OF putting it-and these bum
dies of documents were, of course, her
potent weapons.
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"In several cases, she told me. her
comfortably fixed elderly victims were
really willing, not to say anxious, TO
marry her--which was annoying, she
said, because 1t spoiled everything.
She wanted them to sidestep the mar
rage proposition and fight 1t out in
court, of course. Those who were real
~ willing to marry her she had to run
away from, of course, because she
wasn't in the marrying business.
Several experiences at the outset
with eligible elderlies who We're more
than willing to sbestow their names up
on her taught her the wisdom of Sc
lecting as victims wel-to-do widow
ers. who had grown children. She
found that such men were nearly al
ways liable to hesitate when II came to
the actual point of marrying, on ac-
count OF the expected opposition of the
grown children, and at this stage OF
1t she could always find meanE to pick
a quarrel with him, thus clearing the
way for the framing up of her breach
of promise suit against him.
Besides the suits that she won in
court she had forced quite a number
of elderly parties to settle with her un-
der her threat that she would have re-
course to the law, and showed that
some of these settlements were more
remuneratiye than most of the cases
Only One Real Love Affair.
you may believe that I was in a
state of stunned surprise, perhaps not
unmixed with curiosity, as 1 listened
to this woman's calm and connected
narration of the superior form OF
blackmail in which she had been en-
gaging. l was relieved as to my own
connection with her when she told me
that the case which had won for her
was genuine affair, and that she had
really been befooled by the Brooklyn
contractor from whom / had obtained
the $1,000 award for her.
1T was only after winning that suit
that she had determined to go into this
breach Of promise game as q business.
and to prepare herself for this sort of
thing she deliberately studied the law
in all of its bearings upon breach OF
promise suits until she had become so
expert that she was enabled to frame
up a case on a victim with such pre-
cision and predication that she could
generally tell to a T Just how good her
case was going to be when IL came to
trial.
Don't be shocked she concluded.
smilingly, after she had unraveled her
story to me; L know lots of other
women who are making good in the
breach of promise business all over
the country. but, just because I've
made my pile and am out of the BUSH
ness, I'm not going to give them away
certainly not
"A pleasing tale, that, for a reputable
lawyer and the father of family to
spend morning listening to. wasn't
it? But it's all in the days work, and
/ have a receptive mind for these new
things"