FULL TEXT: Four men wished to marry lovely Lydia Locke, the opera singer, and settle down. They all married her, but nobody settled down for a minute, except hubby number one, who did so permanently, with a bullet though his liver.
Not a
dull moment for those husbands; something; doing all the time. One of the
most charming qualities in a wife is considered to be her ability to distract
her husband’s mind from business cares. All four husbands agreed that she
out-charms all other women at this.
No
matter what awful business problem might be hounding these husbands as they
turned the latch-key of their homes, little wifey Lydia sprang to meet them
with a piece of news that instantly knocked all other troubles out of their
minds.
It
might be a pistol bullet, a bogus baby, a poison pen letter, a divorce, or just
a fist fight she had hail with the janitor or a chauffeur, but it was sure to
be new and unexpected and furnish a thrill. Yet none of the husbands seemed to
appreciate it. Every man applauds and laughs at that kind of wife in a picture
or some other man’s home, where she is the life of the party, but not in his
own.
Husband
number three, dizzy and bally-eyed at the hectic life, offered her $100,000 if,
for just one year, she would quiet down enough to let him give a little thought
to business. This was after they had been divorced and she was not supposed to
bother him any more anyhow.
Some
people thought this was easy money, but it was not. Within six months the strain
of self-suppression became unendurable to Lydia and she blew up worse than
ever.
Lydia
Locke, some forty-odd years ago, was born in Hannibal, Mo., of modest parents
who little knew what they had started. As a little girl she developed a voice
of great range and power which she used successfully in getting anything she
wanted around the house. Later it got her onto the concert platform and she had
some success in the Western towns while she was still in her teens. That voice
caught the ear of Reginald W. Talbot known as “Lord,” and, sometimes, Prince”
Talbot.
Talbot
was a tall, handsome English man with lordly and even princely manners, and
while his titles might not stand investigation in England they were good enough
around Nevada, where he was a successful and much-admired gambler.
She
married “His Lordship” in 1908 and became known as “Lady” Talbot, and hereupon
the trouble began. “Lord” Talbot, who was supposed to be descended from the
famous Talbot who fought with Joan of Arc and got the worst of it, now fought
with his bride.
His
life as a gambler was vivid and exciting enough so that in his home he
insisted, for a change, on peace and quiet, the two things his wife would not
have in the house. At last he got down to first principles and obtained quiet
one night, a year after they had been man-led, by the ancient method of heating
her into silence. In the morning she demanded a divorce and led him over to a
Reno lawyer’s office. Reno divorces are quick, but this was the quickest that
ever was. She obtained her freedom right in that office, with a pistol, and he
also got his peace and quiet forevermore.
The
proceedings were a little irregular and the authorities put her on trial for
murder. The jury, after looking at her sad, sweet face and listening to her
liquid voice, decided that the shooting was in self-defense, an accident, and
that the deceased had, in fact, committed suicide.
The
widow settled up her husband’s estate and as “Lady” Talbot she went to Chicago
and then to Paris to study for grand opera. In both places she met Orville
Harrold, the grand opera tenor, who also had come up from humble parentage
In
Muncie, Ind., he was driving a wagon for a coffin manufacturer when he met and
married his first wife, Effie Harrold. Later he drove a grocery wagon and
trained his golden voice by calling up dumb-waiter shafts.
Then
someone, who knew, heard him singing in a church choir and, in a quick
succession of leaps, he became a world famous singer. But Mrs. Harrold remained
always the same quiet little wife of a coffin driver she had been. The tenor
felt that what he needed now was a wife of life, pep and ambition. Surely
“Lady” Talbot filled the bill, so he divorced quiet little Effie and married
the gambler’s snappy, aggressive widow.
Mr.
Harrold stood the excitement a good many years, longer than any of the others
did, perhaps because his work as a singer took him all over the world and away
from home most of the time, and also possibly because he knew what happened to
the first husband. It was while was was
singing at the Century in New York that Mrs. Harrold had a hand-to-hand duel
with the janitress over a dispute of eight days’ rent.
The
janitress was a husky woman and brandished an iron rod, but Mrs. Harrold
charged in, took it away from her, and the two ladies fought all over the
place. Neighbors foolishly separated them before the fight was settled, so it
had to he fought all over again in court, with charges and counter charges. The
bewildered judge listened as long as he could stand it, then ordered all
charges withdrawn and the case dismissed. After which he adjourned the court
for a rest.
She
was soon back in court again in connection with a one-round, no decision,
unsanctioned bout with a chauffeur over a purse of twenty-five cents. She
landed a right-hander on the chauffeur’s eye and hit him on the head with a
slipper, while he hardly scored at all, but then he was handicapped by his
heavy uniform, while she was skating about in her nightie.
The
chauffeur had been sent up from a drug store to deliver some sleeping powders
to the Harrold apartment. He arrived at midnight and the dispute arose over his
desire to collect a quarter for his pains. Mrs. Harrold was willing to lot him
have that amount, but she had only a half-dollar and doubled if she would get
any change from him. The chauffeur refused to let go of the powders until he
had the money, which resulted in a wrestling match.
Mrs.
Harrold said that he dragged her out into the public hall. As a lady in a
nightgown she resented such treatment and punched him in the eye. One of her
slippers came off and, before putting it on again, she applied it to his head.
At least, that is the way he told it. Mrs. Harrold maintained that she was only
gesturing with it and that he got in the way. It must have been a forceful
gesture, because a doctor hail to take several stitches in the man’s forehead.
On
big suits, as well as little ones, she went to court. She sued Julian W.
Robbins, the banker, for $25,000 because the Robbins car bumped her’s and broke
her leg. The suit was settled out of court, but it would seem to have been
easily worth that amount to force such an energetic person to keep quiet for a
while.
Every
one supposed that the tenor enjoyed these excitements until one day he sued
that wife with a punch, for divorce, naming as co-respondent Arthur H. Marks,
president of the Skinner Organ Company. Mrs. Harrold, with her usual speed and
enterprise, came right back with a counter-suit, naming co-respondents and
everything. To this the tenor replied: “I don’t care who gets it, as long as it
is gotten.”
Lydia
Locke Talbot Harrrold won the divorce and, leaving the singer wifeless but the
richer by a lot of experience, married Mr. Marks, who had a lot of money but
was somewhat poor in experience. This unbalanced state of things she proceeded
to even up for the organ builder.
After
six years of married life Mr. Marks’s nerves showed signs of extreme
exhaustion. It is said that be went to Muldoon’s famous sanitarium to be built
up, but had no more than arrived when his wife called. This was not allowed,
and Prof. Muldoon had a talk with her. After the talk it is related that he
said to his patient:
“You’d
better pack up. I can’t do anything for you. What you need is a divorce.”
Whether
this is true or not, Mr. Marks gave his wife one, with $300,000 alimony, a
house in New York, an estate in Port Chester and several other bits of
properly.
He
supposed that after this he could lead the simple and peaceful life, devoting
himself lo business.
To
his dismay he found that she was on the telephone, calling at his home and
office to discuss a thousand matters which, somehow, needed still to be
adjusted. This would not do at all. He might just as well be married. In
desperation he made one of the most astonishing financial offers that a man
ever made a woman who had no legal claims on him. He put another .$100,000 in
trust for her on the condition that she would not bother him or get into the papers
in any scandalous way for one year. Most people thought he had kissed all that
money good-bye.
Sure
enough, there was peace and silence for nearly six months – ominous
silence because when it broke it was
with a thunderclap that made Mr. Marks forget for a while whether he was a
manufacturer of organs or chewing gum. His ex-wife confided to him that he was
the father of a child which had been born to her since the divorce. She had at
first meant never to mention the matter, but, on second thoughts, it seemed
only fair that he should know, as, no doubt, be would wish to provide for his
child as any fatherly father would.
In
case he should he cruel enough to doubt her, she had the baby itself to show
him, and a birth certificate, affidavits, facts, figures, etc., much more
documentary evidence than one person in a thousand could produce to prove he
was who he thought he was.
In
spite of all this Mr. Marks was mean enough to hire detectives, who found out
that Lydia was mistaken about being the mother of the child, and that she had
borrowed it for adoption from the Willow Maternity Hospital of Kansas City.
They also stated that the birth certificate and all the other papers were
forgeries. The former Mrs. Marks stoutly denied all this until the Kansas City
authorities came and recovered his baby by habeas corpus proceedings. Then she
admitted that she had made an error somehow. Anybody is likely to make a
mistake.
That
was that, but Lydia was on the telephone at the office again, and chiefly she
wanted to know how that mistake of hers effected the $100,000. Mr. Marks
decided that she had forfeited it, but, for the sake of peace, if she would go
away and not bother him for the remaining six months of the specified time he
would compromise by letting her have half of it.
That,
too, looked like easy money, and Mr. Marks began to hope that she was actually
going to win it. His reason for such optimism was that she had married her
secretary, Harry Dornblasser, a much younger person and a sort of soldier of
fortune whose motives and intentions Marks did not quite understand. However,
he wished Dornblasser luck, for lie was now the logical person to receive the
strenuous attentions of the former Mrs. Marks Mr. Marks is one hit pictured by
a reputed statement of the new groom to the effect that he considered that all
four husbands Here marks. The trouble with Dornblasser was that this soldier of
fortune acted on the principle that: “He who fights and runs away lives to
fight another day”
Dornblasser
suddenly came back alone from Europe, where he and his bride were having
their honeymoon. That was all right, but when she followed he simply disappeared,
which left her with four husbands, but none of them available. Meanwhile Mrs.
Marks, deceived by the general peace and quiet in the world, took a chance and
married again. Once more there was an ominous silence broken by a volcanic
eruption in the courts and newspapers
Just
as the final six months probation period was expiring a Federal Grand Jury
indicted Mrs. Lydia Locke Harrold Masts Dorablasser for sending through the
mail, a letter that Attorney Francis Wellman described as “so obscene as to
prohibit the publication of a single line.”
This
“poison pen’’ letter was sent to Mr. Marks, and informed him that his new bride
had done all sorts of unmentionable things in various low dives of Paris. It is
charged that Mrs. Dornblasser wrote the letter and that the Federal agents have
a confession from Frances Adams. Mrs. Dornblasser’s sister, that she mailed the
letter at Belle Fontaine, Ohio.
Mr.
Marks considers that this forfeits the other $50,000. But that is not all. His
present wife, Mrs. Hoover Marks, is good and mad, and has started a suit for
$250,000 against Mrs. Dornblasser for defamation of character.
Mrs.
Dornblasser, heavily veiled and surrounded by a bodyguard of detectives larger
than the squad that protects the President of the United States, pleaded “not
guilty” to the “poison pen” indictment and went away under $1,000 bonds.
Her
attorney, Mr. Max D. Steuer, states that it is all a conspiracy and that his
client knows nothing of the letter.
It
looks as if Mrs. Dornblasser would for a while find ample outlet for her
marvelous energies in defending the two criminal and civil suits against her.
If she should lose the civil one alone it might take away the major portion of
the profits of her last two matrimonial adventures.
Incidentally
the busy and versatile Mrs. Talbot-Harrold-Marks-Dornblesser Hi tied through
the news a few months ago, when through no fault of hers, the very pretty
Baroness Zur Muehlen, formerly Miss Helen Carruthers of New York, either fell
out or jumped out of her hotel room in the Hotel Ritz Carlton, New York, last
July, and her lifeless body was picked up on the roof of the Italian Garden, 70
feet below. She was about lo sail back to Europe next morning and had spent the
evening in a farewell party of friends, among whom was the entertaining Mrs.
Tabot-Harrold- Marks-Dornblesser.
Is
there any reader of this page who would like to be Lydia’s fifth husband if she
wants to marry again?
[“Like
a ‘Vamp’ in the Movies - Startling
Exploits and Experiences in the Restless
Career of Lydia Locke, Who Shot
One Husband, Divorced Two,
Plotted With a Bogus Baby and Is
Before the Courts Once More,”
American Weekly (San Antonio Light), Nov. 8, 1925, p. 8]
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For more cases like this one, see: Vamps – Femmes Fatales – Predatory Women
For more cases, see: Paternity Fraud Rackets
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