Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1906-08-14
Madame Diss DeBar Liberated.

Madame Diss DeBar Liberated.
Ann O'Delia Diss DeBar, who, under
the name of Laura Jackson, was SEN
fenced on December 20, 1901, to seven
years penal servitude for connection
with an immaral cult known as the
'TheOcralic Unity" of which her re-
puted husband, Theodore Jackson, was
the head, has been liberated from Ayles-
bury, England, prison under ticket OF
leave, having obtained the maximum
reduction OF sentence for good behavior.
Nine. Diss DeBar has been known
under many names in the United states
aud Great Britain but her greatest no.
toriety was achieved ss the perpetraior
of a so-called spiritualistic deception by
! which Luther X. Marsh, of New York,
was 10 his old age stripped of the for
,, tune he had accumulated in The practice
of law. Though claiming to be the
daughter of King Louis l. Of Bavaria
aud Lola Montez, she was in fact, the
| daughter of Prof. John c. F. Saloman,
once OF Washington and later OF Ken
lucky.
She became the wife of Gen. Joseph
III. Diss DeBar 10 the seventies, and
later travelled about the country repre-
senting herself as the personificatioh OF
occult powers and the revesler CT hidden
truths, spirtualstic and other, and in
this way, while living in Washington
square, New York, she met Marsh, and,
by means of alleged spirit materializa-
tious and spirit painted pictures so in
fatuated him that he gave her large
sums of money and decided to her his
home in Madison avenue.
About this time General Diss DeBar
left the adventures, who went to live at
the Marsh home, and also hired apart.
ments, where she officialed As a priestess
of spirituaism and won greater noto-
riety.
Suit was brought TO show her up as an
impostor, and she was charged with con-
spring to defrsud Marsh. Her trial re-
suited in her conviction and she was
sentenced to term OF imprisonment. On
her release she went to Europe, then re-
larned to this conntfy, and going to the
West got into more difficulties through
her representations ofbogus spiritusl'sm.
Under the name OF Vera p. Ava she fell
into tie hands of the Chicago police, who
sent her to the penitentiary at Joliet for
two years. Released from that institu-
ton she married Williem j. McGown in
| 1895 at Chicago. Mr.. McGown, like
Marsh, was man of wealth, but this
did not deter her from the practice OF
fraud. In 1899 she was run out of New
Orleans with Theodore Jackson, whose
wife she then said she was.
A year later hey turned up in Cape
Town, South Africa, where Nine. Diss
DeBar called herself Helena and Jackson
called himself Horos. Occultism and hyp.
motto perfoi mances were .he order there,
and one of her South African dupes, a
wealthy contractor, gave his money to
| the woman to establish a colony OF
brotherly love. Soon afterwards the
pair went to London, where they pro.
NOTED the Theocratic Unity organiza-
| ton, scandals in connection with which
led to their arrest in September, 1901.
The trial, which continued at interysls
through three months, developed facts
| of such loathsome character that sew.
eral Of the London papers excluded from
their columns all reports of the proceed
ings in court.
Mr.. Justice Bigham summed up
strongly against the prisoners, saying it
wss difficult to conceive of more revolt
ing and abominsble conduct than that
which had been attributed to them. The
jury quickly returned a verdict of guilty,
whereupon the justice sentenced Jack
SON to Is years penal servitude and his
reputed wife to Z years, penal seryitude.