The Stark County Democrat

WHICH DORAN WILL PRESENT
One of the Most Remarkable Ever Prepared

Declared Insane, He Fights For His Rights.
Stanford White Mentioned as Decoy.

Washington, Feb. 24.—A most extraordinary petition is to be presented to the supreme court tomorrow by James M. Doran, of Philadelphia, of counsel for John Armstrong Chanler, formerly husband of Amelie Rives, the authoress, and a citizen of New York, now a resident of Roanoke Mills, N. C. It will ask permission of the court to file an application for a writ of prohibition directed against "the honorable judges of the supreme court of the state of New York, to the officers and agents of that court, to the magistrates, sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, police officers and each and every person and persons of said state," and "to any person or persons, judges, officers of the law, or private citizens in the states of Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and the District of Columbia," enjoining them from molesting or arresting Chanler while on a journey from his home in North Carolina to New York, where he wishes to appear in a suit which was placed in the hands of Thomas T. Sherman as guardian when Chanler was adjudged a lunatic in 1897. It also asks that the order apply to the return journey to North Carolina, that he be given five days before the trial and five days afterwards, and that a United States marshal be detailed in attendance upon him to enforce the provisions of the writ, and to protect the public from the petitioner, if he is as claimed, "dangerous to the public peace and welfare."

Chanler was sent to Bloomingdale in 1897 on an order signed by Judge Gildersleeves of New York supreme court, declaring him a dangerous lunatic. He escaped in 1899 and went to Victoria, where "a neighbor" instituted similar proceedings but the judge in the latter state found him sane and dismissed the suit.

In his affidavit, accompanying the petition, Chanler makes an oath that he is not and has not been insane; that his incarceration in the Bloomingdale asylum was the result of a conspiracy on the part of Winthrop Astor Chanler and Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, his brother, whom he charges with perjury in connection with those proceedings; that the first named has a pecuniary interest in keeping petitioner locked up, in that otherwise his income would be seriously curtailed through loss of legal fees for which petitioner's estate has been mulcted and he would "suffer for the loss of prestige which he now enjoys in the financial world by reason of his control (illegal as it be) over plaintiff's property in New York and North Carolina."

It is further alleged that as a part of the conspiracy the late Stanford White, on the pretext that petitioner's presence in New York was desired 'solely and exclusively for convivial purposes' lured him to that city for the purpose of giving the supreme court of that state ostensible and colorable jurisdiction over plaintiff's person, and of falsely, fraudulently and unlawfully inducing and enabling said supreme court to arrest and imprison the plaintiff," as an insane person.