Chapter 74
To the world in general, the main subject of interest in connection with the death of Frank Algernon Cowperwood was his fortune: its size, who would inherit it, how much they would each receive. Before the will had been admitted to probate, gossip and rumor had it that Aileen was being cut off with a minimum, that Cowperwood’s two children received the bulk of the estate, also that various London favorites had already received huge gifts.
In less than a week after the death of her husband, Aileen had dismissed his lawyer, and in his place made one Charles Day her sole legal representative.
The will, admitted for probate in the Cook County Superior Court five weeks after the death of Cowperwood, contained gifts ranging in size from $2,000 left to each of his servants to $50,000 left to Albert Jamieson, and $100,000 to the Frank A. Cowperwood Observatory, an institution presented to the University of Chicago ten years previously. Included among the ten persons or organizations listed were his two children, and the amount of money involved in these specific gifts totalled approximately half of a million dollars.
Aileen was provided for from the income of the balance of the estate. At her death, his art gallery and collection of paintings and sculpture, valued at $3,000,000, were to be given to the City of New York for the education and enjoyment of the public. Cowperwood had heretofore placed in the hands of trustees $750,000 for these galleries. In addition to this, he willed that a plot of land be purchased in the borough of the Bronx, and a hospital, the buildings to cost not more than $800,000, be erected thereon. The balance of his estate—part of the income from which would provide maintenance of the hospital—was to be placed in the hands of his appointed executors, among whom were Aileen, Dr. James, and Albert Jamieson. The hospital was to be named the Frank A. Cowperwood Hospital, and patients were to be admitted regardless of race, color, or creed. If they lacked financial means with which to pay for treatment, they were to receive it free of charge.
Aileen, once Cowperwood was gone, being extremely sentimental about his last wishes and desires, focussed her first attention on the hospital. In fact, she gave out interviews to the newspapers elaborating her plans, which included a convalescent home which was to be free of any institutional air. She concluded one of these interviews by saying:
“All my energies will be directed toward the accomplishment of my husband’s plan, and I shall make the hospital my lifework.”
Cowperwood had failed to take into consideration, however, the workings of the American courts throughout the nation: the administration of justice or the lack of it; the length of time American lawyers were capable of delaying a settlement in any of these courts.
For instance, the decision of the United States Supreme Court, killing off Cowperwood’s Combination Traction Company of Chicago, was the first blow to the estate. Four and a half million dollars of his, invested in his Union Traction Company bonds, had been guaranteed by the Combination Traction Company. Now they were faced with years of wrangling in court to decide not only their value but their ownership. It was too much for Aileen. She promptly retired as executrix and turned the problem over to Jamieson. And in consequence, almost two years passed with little or nothing accomplished. In fact, all of this was during the panic of 1907, by reason of which Jamieson, without knowledge of the court, Aileen, or her attorney, turned the bonds in question over to a reorganizing committee.
“If they were sold out, they would be valueless as they are,” Jamieson explained. “The reorganization committee hopes to work out a plan to save the Combination Traction Company.”
Whereupon the reorganization committee deposited the bonds with the Middle Trust Company, the organization interested in combining all of the Chicago railways into one big company. “What did Jamieson get out of it?” was the query. And while the estate had now been in the course of probation for two years in Chicago, no move had been made to settle affairs in New York. The Reciprocal Life Insurance Company, holding a mortgage of $225,000 on the addition to the Fifth Avenue Mansion, along with $17,000 of unpaid interest on this mortgage, started proceedings to collect. And their lawyers, without the knowledge of Aileen or her lawyers, worked out a plan with Jamieson and Frank Cowperwood, Jr., whereby an auction was held and this gallery, along with the pictures in it, was sold. The proceeds of this sale barely covered the claims of the insurance company and the City of New York for unpaid water bills and taxes amounting to around $30,000. To add to all this, Aileen and her lawyers appealed to the Probate Court in Chicago to have Jamieson removed as executor.
In sum, as Aileen informed Judge Severing:
“It has been all talk and no money ever since my husband’s death. Mr. Jamieson talked pleasantly about money and was a good one at making promises, but I was never able to get much real money out of him. When I demanded it directly, he would say there wasn’t any. I have lost faith in him and have come to mistrust him.”
She then related to the court how he had transferred $4,500,000 worth of bonds without her knowledge; how he had arranged for an auction of the art gallery, which was sold for the sum of $277,000, whereas it was valued at $400,000; how he had charged her $1500 collection fee when he had already been paid as executor; and how he had refused her attorney access to the books of the estate.
“When Mr. Jamieson asked me to sell my house and art collection,” she concluded, “and pay him 6 per cent on the transaction, I simply told him I wouldn’t do it. He threatened to blow me higher than Gilroy’s kite if I didn’t.”
The hearing was adjourned for three weeks.
“It is a case of a woman meddling in things she does not understand,” observed Frank A. Cowperwood, Jr.
Thus, while Aileen was attempting to remove Jamieson as executor in the Probate Court in Chicago, Jamieson, after three years of inaction in New York, was applying for ancillary papers there. However, Aileen’s move brought up the question of his fitness, which caused Surrogate Monahan to postpone action for fifteen days to show cause why he should or should not be granted ancillary papers. At the same time, in Chicago, Jamieson, replying to Judge Severing on the charges of Aileen, insisted that he had done no wrong and had never received a dime illegally. Rather, he asserted, he had done much to preserve the estate.
However, Judge Severing, refusing to remove Jamieson as executor, remarked:
“On the question of the widow’s award, an executor who would charge a percentage for the collection of her award, in addition to his fee from the whole estate, and who would be so forgetful of his duties, ought to be removed, it is true. But it is doubtful if I have the power to remove for that cause alone.”
Whereupon Aileen started plans for an appeal to the Supreme Court.
At this point, however, the London Underground Company brought suit in New York in the United States Circuit Court, to collect $800,000 due them. They did not question the solvency of the estate, although authoritative statements did show some $3,000,000 had vanished into thin air in the process of litigation. The Court appointed one William H. Cunningham as receiver in connection with this suit, and this receiver, although Aileen was ill of pneumonia at the time, proceeded to place guards on duty at the Fifth Avenue property, and three days later arranged for a three-day auction of pictures, rugs, and tapestries to meet the claim of the London Underground. The guards were on hand twenty-four hours a day to insure against disappearance of any portion of the property that was to be auctioned. They roamed over the premises, to the great prejudice of orderly management of the household, and in defiance of the right of possession and occupancy.
Charles Day, one of Aileen’s lawyers, submitted to the court that the proceeding was one of the worst pieces of judicial tyranny ever attempted in this country; that it was purely a conspiracy to get into the house by illegal means, for the purpose of forcing a sale of the house and pictures and destroying Cowperwood’s intention and desire to leave the mansion and its contents as a museum for the public.
However, at the same time that her New York attorneys were trying to prevent the temporary receivership being made permanent, her lawyers in Chicago were attempting to have a receiver appointed there for the entire estate.
A clear title to the additional art gallery, sold as a result of the foreclosure proceedings of the Reciprocal Life Insurance Company, had never been obtained, and after four months the insurance company filed a suit against Receiver Cunningham and against the title company which refused to take title to the art gallery.
In addition, while the reorganization committee of Chicago capitalists were working on a plan with
