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"Mrs. Warren Springer, a well-to-do society woman of Chicago, visiting in the "Ghetto." Mrs. Springer is one of the many noble-hearted women of our country that devote their time and money to the assistance of the deserving poor." **** |
It’s an old story: a newcomer
who wants desperately to be accepted by the elite. Usually, the way it goes is
that the blue bloods give her a hard time.
The
latecomer Mrs. Springer gave it right back, no pretty-please for her.
The daughter of Irish
immigrants, Maggie Maginness was born in 1870 in Newark, Ohio, about 30 miles
east of Columbus. She always claimed that her family came from old Scotch-Presbyterian
stock, yet inexplicably she lived in a Franciscan Sisters convent in Lexington,
KY, between the ages of 10 and 20.
When Maggie left the convent,
gossips said, she worked as a shop girl in Chicago. Presumably, that’s how she
met the real estate and manufacturing mogul, Warren Springer, whom she married
sometime during the 1880s. Daughter Frances came along in 1893; Warren’s son
from his first marriage, William, was estranged.
And now Marguerite Warren
Springer – she took her millionaire husband’s first name for her middle name,
so there would be no confusion as to which Mr. Springer she was married – prepared to enter Chicago society with Gilded
Age flourish.
There she
is, volunteering with Chicago’s Visitation and Aid Society, patting a howling
baby with her gloved hand.
Then she’s basking
in attention, having pledged to provide land at Van Buren & Green Streets
on which an Industrial Arts School would be built.
Next she’s telling the Cook County League
of Women’s Clubs that the Chicago Public Library is a “trysting place for
tramps.”
Now she’s starting an Illinois chapter of
the Daughters of the Revolution after the Illinois chapter of the Daughters of
the American Revolution has turned down her application for membership.
Later, the D.A.R. regent,
Mrs. Alice Bradford Wiles, stated that she “didn’t like what she knew about
Mrs. Springer.”
What Mrs. Wiles knew was that
in July 1894 Warren Springer posted $10,000 bail for his wife after she was
indicted by a grand jury for attempting to bribe a juror in the case of Metropolitan Elevated Railway Co. vs. Warren
Springer.
Mr. Springer had sued the
company for damages to buildings that he owned. Marguerite approached the wife
of a juror (or two jurors, or their mothers, depending on the newspaper
report), who told the judge.
Hence a dramatic courtroom
scene where Marguerite was identified as the briber. Indicted twice, she never
served time.
Evidently, though, the feud
between the D.A.R. and the Daughters of the Revolution went on and on. The two
organizations sparred for primacy. Chicago’s society women had no choice but to
take sides.
A “struggle
for social supremacy,” as one reporter characterized it. By 1904, Marguerite
had had enough.
That year, she once again
attempted to influence her husband’s business dealings. An attorney named
Julius Coleman was involved in litigation against Warren Springer. Marguerite
wanted to get Coleman off the case.
She admitted that she started
digging around and turned up a juicy story about Mr. Coleman. In 1881, he was
arrested on a charge of perjury while practicing law in Indiana. He escaped
from prison, fled to Mexico, and eventually returned to Indiana where the
governor pardoned him.
Marguerite went to the
newspapers with this information. The State of Illinois promptly started proceedings
to disbar Coleman, who protested that he had told the truth when he applied for
the Illinois bar. This created quite a stir.
And on top of everything,
none other than Mrs. Julius Coleman was the regent of the Illinois chapter of
the D.A.R.
The story broke while Mrs.
Springer, Mrs. Coleman, and hundreds of other women were gathered in St. Louis
for the annual convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. The
D.A.R. faction declared its loyalty to Mrs. Coleman and denounced Marguerite Warren
Springer. The following day, a front page headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune stated:
Will
Ostracize Mrs. Springer;
Club
Women Plan to Punish Chicagoan for Attacking Julius A. Coleman
Social
ostracism for Mrs. Warren Springer is the plan decided upon by the club friends
of Mrs. Julius A. Coleman, whose husband Mr. and Mrs. Springer are seeking to
have disbarred because of an offense forgotten for 23 years. Mrs. Springer has
admitted that she personally brought to light the old conviction of the lawyer,
and Mrs. Coleman’s friends assert that she will be made to pay for this “spite
work.”
The story closed with a quote
from a Coleman ally:
Mrs.
Springer has been trying by resorting to every method to get to the front in
Chicago. This last attempt on her part to cause two hearts to ache as they have
not ached for 20 years will not raise her any in the estimation of Chicago
women.
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| Newspaper sketch of Marguerite Warren Springer, 1904 |
In 1912, Warren Springer died. Soon after, his widow contacted an architect to design a charity hospital for women which would be built on property on Harrison Street, Chicago.
The hospital would be six
stories with an “elegant façade,” a lighted crystal fountain, and a goldfish
pool. There would be a private dining room and bedroom for Mrs. Springer. She
asked the architect to create the Springer Coat of Arms, which “dated from the
time of Charlemagne,” she told him, in gold on vellum.
As a physician “with a
special certificate in gynecology and abdominal surgery,” she would practice in
the hospital. Yikes!
Then it turned out that there
would be just “eight small booths” for charity patients. Those women would
enter the hospital through an alleyway, the architect said later.
He finished the plans and
sent a bill to Marguerite Springer. She would not pay it so he sued her. Then
he discovered that she didn’t own any property on Harrison Street.
Do you want to hear about Marguerite
and the car raffle embezzlement incident?
See also June 15, May 4, April 6, March 6 + 10, 2016 posts.
https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2016/06/marguerite-warren-springer-mean-girl-in.html
