Newspaper Page Text
Breach-of-Proni'
■ymnnar
ise Trial of the Fu-
ture Ought to Be
Passed upon by a
Jury of Trained
Psychologists, Who
Would Give a Ver
dict on the Scientific
Records, Produced
by Tested Mechani
cal Apparatus, of
Her Re-actions Un
der Examination and
Cross-examination. ”
Sr Suing for
W\ $150,000
f | toHeal
'“’" c Her Own,
Thoughtful
Miss Ryan
Extent of j
a Jury /i
in Whereby the Exact
an Be Ascertained by
of Psychologists
M ISS BESS RYAN, otherwise known
as “Toodles,” an attractive and
accomplished young woman,
eued Harry M. Mansfield, owner of the
Ferncroft Inn, near Boston, for $150,-
000 for breach of promise to marry.
In spite of an impressive mass of evi
dence the jury failed to agree upon a
verdict, chiefly, it was said, because
one of them could not understand how
any woman’s affections could be worth
$150,000. Miss Ryan here explains why
she thinks that a jury called to sit upon
such a case should be composed of ex
pert psychologists, able to measure the
injuries done to a woman s heart with
the precise instruments, and to measure
exactly her capacity for mental, moral
and physical suffering.
pleasure of her society at supper. There
fore I am very moderate when I value my
society at $10. A reasonable charge un
der this head would be:
"Being bright and cheerful twice a
day at meal times for four
years $73,000"
But then I also had to entertain Mr.
Mansfield's friends, no matter what their
condition. Sometimes there were as
many as one hundred of them at supper,
and I was expected to keep on being
pleasant until the last of them was tired
out.
I was deeply in love with Mr. Mansfield
recovering from overnight excesses.
I know that many people laugh when
they hear that a girl has asked $150,000
for breach of promise to marry and all
the injuries that it implies. They think
that she is grasping and that no girl’s in
juries are worth that much.
That is just why we need to establish
a really scientific standard of the value
Of a woman's affections and a scientific
I CONSIDER that $150,000 was an ex
tremely moderate sum to ask Harry
M. Mansfield for failing to keep his
promise to marry me.
At the first trial I failed to obtain a
verdict simply because one juryman held
out and caused a disagreement. He was,
I am told, a New England pessimist
who had inflicted his egotistic personal
ity on a poor woman for years and then
became enraged because she exacted
some financial consideration from him.
“Toodles" was Mansfield’s pet name for
me. During the trial the judge asked the
local theatre to stop a song dedicated to
me called “Has Anybody Here Seen
Toodles?" because it was the most popu
lar feature of the show and might influ
ence the jury The precaution was un
necessary. All but one of the jurors sym
pathized with me from the start, and the
twelfth was insensible to song.
I am pursuing Mr. Mansfield as a mat
ter of principle and Justice to women. I
suspended playing my part of Fashion
in “Experience,” in which I am intensely
interested, for eight weeks to be present
at the first trial. I am going to have an
other trial and I will keep after Mr.
Mansfield as long as I live, if necessary,
in order to get justice from him.
I fixed the amount of damages after ap
praising at a ridiculously low cost all the
devotion he had exacted from my heart
and mind, all the injuries he had done to
my nervous system, all the burden he
had placed upon my loving patience, all
the shock he had given to my w-omanly
pride, and last, but not least, all the end
less personal services he had required of
me. I fixed it upon a purely psychologi
cal basis.
When I first met Henry M. Mansfield I
was an innocent, unsophisticated young
girl with a natural desire to see the
world and enjoy a wider social life. I
met him first when I went on to the Yale-
Harvard game at Boston from my home
in New Haven.
It was at a merry dinner party after
the game that I first saw Mansfield. He
was the proprietor of the very fashion
able Ferncroft Inn, at Middleton, near
Boston, which brought him a large in
come. It was to Boston all that Richard
Miss Bess Ryan,
“Toodles,”
Who, Suing for
$150,000 for a
Broken Heart,
Outlines Here a
New Idea to
Determine
Heart Values,
An Apparatus Which Records the
Keenness of the Nervous System
and Its Susceptibility to Such
Shocks
as a Lover’s Ap
pearance Causes.
Every Girl Ought to Wear a Sort
of Heart Taximetre When
She’s Proposed to.”
method of appraising the various de
mands which a man may make on them
and the injuries he may do to them.
I believe that in order to reach a fair
decision on such a case as mine we need
a jury of trained psychologists rather
than one of average men. I am an
amateur student or psychology and have
often discussed the subject with students
and professors from Harvard, whom I had
to entertain. I know that the science of
psychology’has instruments for recording
every emotion. They measure the differ
ences in the susceptibilities of various
persons to the same emotion and show
whether the emotions are genuine or
simulated.
One woman is stabbed to the heart
when a man says, "You’re not very en
tertaining this evening,” while another is
comparatively unmoved when he tells her
that she’s a slattern.
I am very susceptible to emotional
shock. I have read that a simple instru
ment called the pneumograph, which can
be adjusted over a woman’s heart, will
record the intensity of her feelings.
With this instrument Professor Mun-
sterberg, the Harvard psychologist, could
read just how much a woman had suffered
from an unfeeling lover and how her suf
ferings compared with those of an aver-
age standard woman.
It is evidently a very complicated
psychological problem to weigh all the
factors entering into my case. It calls
not only for scientific instruments, but
for a trained ability to perceive facts that
are not thought of by the ordinary man.
For instance, I had to lunch and dine
with Mr. Mansfield and be bright and
cheerful to him practically every day for
four years. What is it worth to be bright
a man expects $10. I do not put myself 1
on a level with a chorus girl, but I men
tion it to show that an effort has been |
made to put a market value on such -
things. i
I have been told that a certain famous
French star exacts $1,000 for the mere j
at that time, when I had not found out t
his insincerity, and would have worked '
myself to death merely to win a smile 8
from him. And here let me say that no '
woman should ever be such a slave to a t
man, but I know they will.
He expected me to go to remarkable a
lengths in entertaining his friends. At
the first trial his lawyers tried to show p
that I kissed Mayor John E. Fitzgerald,
of Boston, and others of his friends. They
failed to prove anything, but it shows
what he had expected of me, for he had
told me to be particularly nice to them.
Then I acted as Mr. Mansfield’s chauf- t
feur and ran him into Boston and back, a n
round trip of forty-four miles, nearly a
every day in the year. I had to take out h
a license in order to do this. At ordinary ^
taxicab rates my services would have e
been worth $17.70 a day. For this work n
I might make this charge: h
“Carrying pasenger 44 miles a day
at 30 cents the first half-mile and g
10 cents a quarter-mile thereafter c
for 300 days a year for four w
years $5,310” p
Then I attended to all his stock market h
Investments and speculation. To obtain jj
an intelligent and thoroughly honest man a
to do this work he would have had to pay tl
at least $3,000 a year. h
Copyright, 1915, by the Star Company.
An Experiment by the Pneu
mograph, Which Shows the
Actual Intensity of Emo-
t i o n s by Recording
Their Effect on
Heart and Lungs.
would sometimes be re
when she Is finally cast aside after years
of devotion. Here the services of the ex
pert psychologist are particularly neces
sary. He should use all the instruments
of the psychological laboratory to estab
lish just how much suffering her heart is
capable of undergoing from all kinds "t
shocks and emotions.
An actress is so constantly pursued by
insincere trifiers that I believe an attrac
tive girl would be wise to wear a kind of
taximeter on her heart to register the
wear and tear on that organ.
Do not understand me as arguing that
women should aim to get the full value in
money of their services and affections
from a man instead of giving them for
love, as they have always done. All I say
is that when a man casts a woman aside
after she has given years of devotion and'
patience to him, as Mr. Mansfield cast
me adrift, then a scientific, psychological
analysis will show that the injury done tc
her organism is not excessively measures
by the fortune of the richest man.
in return I
warded with a remark like this:
"Your chatter is splitting my head open.
For heaven's sake, don’t jar my head
when you touch me?”
■Vou ask why 1 endured all this. Just
because I loved him and because it is the
nature of woman to endure things.
Would the psychologist consider an
item like this in the bill of damages un
reasonable:
“Speaking harshly ten times a week
for four years, at $10 per epithet
or abusive phrase $2,080"
' There were other times when he was
seriously ill, in addition to these self-
inflicted indispositions. I nursed him
through several of these illnesses, and I
believe that I was probably the means of
saving his life. He should pay for that
what he believes it is worth.
There remains to be appraised the
greatest injury of all—the damage to a
delicate and sensitive woman’s heart
mm 1
L
g|g *
k'
-'r.' / *f&|
• > *. .'ffi
j , *.4**
I