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Daughter Hewitt claimed that the mental test had been given to her while she was suffering from appendicitis, that Dr. Tillman had told her it was merely to see "whether her heart could stand the ether for the operation." Some of the questions & answers on which Psychologist Scally based her mental rating: Q. What is the longest river in the U. S. A. I don't know. Q. How many years are there to a Presidential term? A. Two. Q. Why did the Pilgrims come to America? A. To make a pilgrimage.
In Hackensack, N. J., Dr. Lawrence Martin Collins, senior resident of the New Jersey State Hospital for the insane, declared that he had given Daughter Hewitt a thoroughgoing examination only last November, found her entirely free of mental taint. She could, he said, speak & write French fluently, speak Italian, and had read Shakespeare, Dickens, various histories and a book called The Philosophy of Life. "It is my belief," said he, "that this young girl has been conditioned during her early formative years by an unwholesome environment, and that any intellectual deficiencies which may be present are due not to any pathological defects, but to the lack of development of her intellectual faculties."
Mother's Story, Born Maryon Andrews, Mother Hewitt has since 1902 been married successively to a rich California doctor, a Manhattan broker. Inventor Hewitt, a British baron, a Newark, N. J. lawyer. She has lost one husband by death, two by divorce, two by annulment. After her divorce, year ago, she resumed the name of Hewitt. Last week she was registered in a Manhattan hotel as "Baroness d'Erlanger." To her daughter's monstrous charges against her, Mrs. Maryon Andrews Bruguiere Denning Hewitt d'Erlanger McCarter replied with a blanket denial of everything except the fact of sterilization. She made affidavit that she had always lavished love and luxury on her backward daughter, that Ann's lack of education had been her own wilful fault. She had been dismissed from various schools "for various reasons," from one Philadelphia school "because of an incident too scandalous to mention." Always Mother Hewitt had striven to break "certain unfortunate little habits" in Ann. A statement from the attending physician supported her assertion that Ann had been born two months prematurely, weighing only 3 1/2 lb., in the feverish Paris of August 1914, that only exceptional motherly care had kept her alive. How could she be accused of seeking her daughter's income after she had spent large sums to establish Ann's legitimacy in court when Father Hewitt's brothers and sisters contested his will? Furthermore, her daughter's chief charge was absurd since neither of them could ever touch the trust fund principal, which was reserved eventually for Cooper Union.