Holritter v. Wagner

Stocebridge, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. “Truth’s fountain may be clear, her streams are muddy; And cut through such canals of contradiction, That wo must often navigate o’er fiction.” So wrote Lord Byron, and his language applies with peculiar force to the testimony of the witnesses in this case, which comes from the Orphans’ Court of Baltimore City. It Wyas there decided by a divided court in favor of the appellee, ⁶⁰⁴ Emma G. Wagner. The contest arose over the right to administer upon the estate of Annie M. Beck. Letters were first granted by the orphans’ court to Eva M. Magee, who claimed the right as an adopted child of Mrs. Beck.

The orphans’ court thereafter, upon application of other parties, issued its citation to a number of persons in order to determine the party properly entitled to receive the grant under the terms of article 93 of the Code o.f Public General Laws. Mrs. Magee by her answer still set up her claim as an adopted child, a position manifestly untenable, since the supposed period of adoption long ante-dated the Act of 1892, by which provision was first made for the legal adoption of children, and at the hearing and before the taking of any testimony, Mrs. Magee dismissed her petition for the granting of letters to her. This left, as persons claiming, the brothers and sisters of Mrs. Beck upon the one hand, and Mrs. Emma G. Wagner, who claimed the right as a daughter of Mrs. Beck, ■on the other. There was no dispute as to the relation of Henry Holritter and his sisters to the deceased, but it was, in behalf of the members of the Holritter family, urged that Mrs. Beck never had a child of her own, and that consequently Mrs. Wagner could not be entitled to receive a grant of letters.

The witnesses called to support Mrs. Wagner’s claim are in absolute contradiction of Henry Holritter, Mrs. Brant, George Holritter and Mary J. Holritter, and contradict themselves at various points. The larger part of them are women, who, like Mrs. Beck, had passed a considerable period as managers or inmates of houses of prostitution in some of the most widely known bawdy house localities, such as King Street, North Street and Raborg Street. They are a class whose moral perceptions were inevitably a good deal dulled by the character of life they had led and their associations. More than one had seen fit to contract a marriage though a prior husband was living, and no divorce was obtained until a considerable interval of time after the new contractual re ⁶⁰⁵ lation liad been created.

Mrs. Beck herself was married three times, and her divorces from numbers one and two were not obtained until the new favorite had been accepted and installed. The