Word: van
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Massachusetts is on trial!" This snatch of rhetoric would up both the final remarks of Dr. Miriam Van Waters' attorney last Tuesday, and the next-to-last stage in the case of Commissioner of Correction Elliott McDowell versus the head of the Women's Reformatory at Framingham. The final decision now rests with Dean Griswold of the Law School and the other members of governor Dever's newly-appointed commission and although Massachusetts may or may not be on trial, many of its citizens have a seething concern in the Van Waters affair...
Most of the seething has been on Dr. Van Waters' behalf. When Commissioner McDowell announced on December 27 that he was going to fire her, public sentiment mounted quickly and burst forth in the open hearings held before McDowell in the State House from January 13 to February 8. Most of the spectators were strong Van Waters partisans and didn't try to suppress their feelings, it looked to them as though the case was a shameless example of political muggery, for the defendant had a long and brilliant record in reformatory work; she was internationally famous for progressive techniques...
...charges against her were grave: that she had violated state laws, and that she was indifferent to wide-spread immorality among the inmates. But the outrageous attacks upon Dr. Van Waters for many months before McDowell dismissed her had convinced many that not only the charges themselves but the motives behind them were suspect. These attacks were carried out through the agency of two Boston newspapers, and the two men who had been investigating the Reformatory last year were mysteriously tied up with the papers. One "prober" was McDowell's deputy, Frank Dwyer. The other was State Senator Michael LoPresti...
...first LoPresti story was headlined GIRL SLAIN, with a subhead "Senator Charges," LoPresti accused Dr. Van Waters of attempting to hush up the "murder," and produced a pathetic statement from the girl's parents to the effect that the "victim" wanted desperately to live, and could not have committed suicide. LoPresti himself stated that he had seen signed statements about beatings the girl was alleged to have received, "and about what happened in Dr. Van Waters' little iron curtain empire on the day of the murder." But in spite of certain dubious evidence that LoPresti produced in the American, even...
...work of many a U.S. artist (e.g., Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton) on to Christmas cards, De Beers diamonds ads, etc., offered to buy the picture for 50,000 francs (about $400 at the time). But the canny patron was in no hurry; after the painting was authenticated as Van Gogh's, he upped his price to a good bit more. Lewenthal paid the price, but for "two years of agony" he could not get the picture out of France. "Elements," he explains mysteriously, tried to bilk him of his find. Finally, last July, after a series of trips...