FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Darby Day, jr., the 21-year-old son of the multimillionaire head of Life Insurance Underwriter’s Association, recovering Hollywood from acid hurled into his eyes by his bride of a few months, who then sought to end his own life, will probably sue for divorce in Chicago.
Even should he not file the divorce action, it expected that
Mrs. Bernice Lundstrom Day, the 20-year-old wife will.
On the other hand, the young Mrs. Day has threatened to sue
her mother-in-law, Mrs. Darby Day, sr., for alienation of her husband’s
affections.
It has been learned since the acid-throwing episode that the
divorce court will be no new experience for Mrs. Day.
Back in 1921 her father, Charles T. Lundstrom, a builder and
contractor, erected the Montrose bachelor apartments in Chicago.
Bernice, then a high school student and eager for adventure,
prevailed upon her father to allow her to act as awl on-board operator in the
apartment.
And there she met Howard Fish, the son of Mrs. Jessie M.
Fish.
A romance quickly came into being and, it is said now, progressed despite the
objections of her parents. It was even said that Howard, a slender youth
dressed himself, upon occasion, in genteel clothing to obtain entrance to the
Lundstrom home.
~ Her First Elopement ~
And then, one day, the two jumped into Berniere’s snappy,
yellow roadster drove to Waukegan, where they were married.
After the marriage, so the story goes, the young people went
to live with Fish’s mother. There were quarrels, and, it is said, the bride
once blackened her young husband’s eyes.
They separated; and, a short time later, were divorced. She
and Young Day were married after a whirlwind courtship of just two and one-half
weeks. The romance is said to have had its beginning in a Sheridan Hotel
courtship, when she succeeded in beating him in her yellow speedster.
And, it is said, there were stormy scenes long before they
started on their belated honeymoon to the Pacific Coast.
One of Darby’s best friends in Chicago asserts that upon one
occasion a party at a select North Side hotel was broken up in a precipitate
manner when Mrs. Day, then a bride of a few days, quarreled violently with her
husband and struck him.
The acid-throwing came as the culmination of a series of
quarrels, after one of which the wife left the home of her mother-in-law in
Hollywood.
Then, one night, she returned.
She called young Day to the door of his home. A moment later
he staggered back into the house, screaming with pain.
“My eyes! My eyes! She has blinded me!”
~ A Tale of Thwarted Love. ~
Physicians were summoned immediately. In the meantime Mrs.
Day
Her sister rushed her to a hospital. Now, after
convalescence, she is at liberty on bonds of $5,000 pending the hearing of the
charges against her.
She has told a most amazing story, a story of thwarted love,
in which she has pictured Mrs. Day, Sr., as the one responsible for the
wrecking of their married happiness.
“We never had a chance from the time we were married,” the
young wife asserted. “Mr. Day, my husband’s father, was always nice to us, but
his mother never caused us anything but trouble.
“She would tell untrue stories about each other, and
quarrels would result. Then she would be so sweet about it that it would look
as though it was my fault.”
~ Mrs. Day, Sr., Story ~
The most dramatic story of the actual acid throwing has been
told by Mrs. Day, Sr., the young man’s mother, who said:
“Last week she threatened
to kill my son several times and I had to take a gun away from her and hide the
cartridges. Then Sunday morning she told she had taken poison and that she was
going out in the streets to die.
“I talked to her and she finally admitted she hadn’t taken
the poison and said she would stay with us. But a moment later she ran out the
front door. It was just after this she went up on the hill and jumped down it,
bruising herself badly.
“Then Monday night Bernie came to our house and said she had
come back to stay. I said, ‘No, dear, you will be better with your own mother
for awhile. You go home and rest up and then you can come back in a few days.”
“She said she wanted to talk to Darby. I was afraid she
would carry out some of her threats and told him not to go out the door with
her. but she did.
“Then she said: ‘Look up at me, dear.” He looked up at her
and she threw the acid on his face.”
It is reported Day may not even be seriously scarred as the
result of the experience in that the young wife and not use nitric acid, as
supposed, but ascetic acid. [The damage on the upper layers of the skin was
nevertheless extreme, as is shown in the photograph.]
[“Acid Thrower Faces Second Divorce Case – Darby Day’s Young
Wife Showed Stormy Temper Before Second Whirlwind Courtship.” The Star
(Wilmington, De.), Apr. 19, 1925, p. 27]
***
FULL
TEXT (Article 2 of 2): Beautiful Mrs. Bernice Day, the “Acid Bride,” who
brought her short honeymoon to a grim conclusion in California by hurling a
searing liquid in the face of her young millionaire husband, has been released
from San Quentin Prison, where she served fourteen months of her indeterminate
sentence.
Her
“time” spent within prison walls, where she, having been pampered and waited
upon al her life, served as waitress to her sisters in gray has mellowed and
softened her temperament Gone are the little creases which shadowed her
forehead during the weeks of her trial and appeal. Gone are the tiny iron lines
around her mouth. She has emerged from confinement more lovely than ever.
No
season, on the Lido – no rest cure in the Alps – could have been more effectual
than her months of servitude in the long dining-room, or whose floor the sun
cast shadowy reflections of symbolic prison bars.
At
San Quentin she learned more of patience and forbearance. She learned to serve
her fellowmen She learned consideration. Peace crept into her soul and moulded
her features into the present appearance of serenity and calm.
Society
was aghast at the tragic termination of Bernice Lundstrom Day’s honeymoon.
A
member of one of Chicago’s wealthiest families – young, beautiful and popular –
she made
one of the “catches” of the season. married young Darby Day, Jr., the son of
the millionaire insurance broker.
Society
and the god of love seemed to smile upon the match. The young couple went to California,
where they took up their residence in the luxurious mansion constructed for
them in Beverley Hills. They seemed perfectly and blissfully happy.
Then
one morning the papers reported that Bernice was lying in a hospital near death
from attempted self-poisoning, and that her handsome husband had been horribly
scarred and, perhaps, blinded by burns received when Bernice had hurled acid in
his face.
The
story was published in papers throughout the nation. Friends were astonished
that such horror could have crept into the lives of those two who seemed so
favored by fortune.
Bit
by bit, during the next few days, but there came out – but there were several
versions. First was Bernice’s own story and a note hastily written after she
had thrown the acid at Darby and later taken poison.
“Darby,
I’m sorry as can be,” it read, “but after your mother acted the way he did and would
have nothing to do with you after I saw you this P. M. I guess it’s quits.”
“I
love you from the bottom of my heart, and they say love will go to extremes. We
are both in the same fix and you will never find a love as true or as pure as
mine. Mother-in-law should not live with young married people. Love. Bernice.”
From
Chicago came a brief message from Darby Day, Sr., just before he took the train
for Los Angeles. Bernice had several times acted irrationally, he said, and he
believed she might be mentally deranged, he told reporters.
Mrs.
Day, Sr., was of the same opinion. Bernice had threatened her son, she said.
Only the week before, she alleged, she had taken away a revolver from
her daughter-in-law, and hidden it.
“I
loved Bernice like a daughter,” Mrs. Day said, “but last week she threatened several time to kill my son and I had
to take a gun away from her and hide the cartridge. Then she told me that she
had taken poison and was going out on the street to die.
“I
talked to her and finally she admitted that she hadn’t taken poison. She said
she would stay with us. But a moment later she ran out of the front door. She
ran up on the hill by the Douglas Fairbanks house and jumped off. She was badly
bruised.
“Monday
night she came to the house and said she was thereto stay. I said, ‘No, dear,
you will be better with your mother for a week. You go home and rest up, and
then you can come back in a few days.’
“She
said he wanted to talk to Darby. I was afraid she would carry out some of her
threats and told him not to go out of the door with her. He did.
“Then
she said, ‘Look up at me, dear.’ He looked up, and she threw the acid in his
face
“It
also seemed to me that there was the sound of a shot. Darby starred back into
the hallway, and cried.
“’Mother!
Mother! – she’s blinded me!”
Differing
from this version of the painful drama is the account of an eye witness,
Carolyn Lundstrom, younger sister of Bernice.
“Sunday
my sister called up Darby and he Said he would not see her. We got in our car
and drove over there. I did not know that Bernice had any acid with her or intended
to do any harm. She went in the house and I stayed in the car. In a few minutes
she came running out. She was crying. She said. ‘Let’s drive away Then she said
she had burned her hand and told me about the acid.
“We
stopped at a drugstore, where she could get something for the burns. She went
in and bought two bottles of veronal. She wrote the note to Darby in the
drugstore on a telegraph blank. She took the poison in the car.
This
testimony was later repeated in court, where Bernice claimed that she had meant
to drink the acid herself. She had raised the bottle to her lips, she said,
when Darby struck her hand and the acid flew in his face.
It
was obvious that the sympathies of the jury were with the young woman. Then
came a tense moment.
The
prosecuting attorney led young Day to the witness stand. He stood so that only
the unscarred side of his face was visible.
“Gentlemen
of the jury, said the official, “this is the way he looked before he married
this woman.”
Then
stripping off the bandage? And turning young Day so that the other side of his
face was visible—
“Now
look at him,” he shouted — after matrimony!”
The
jury and Court gasped at the sight.
It
was this gesture that sent Bernice to prison.
When
the jury returned, after sitting six hours, they declared a verdict of “guilty
of assault with intent to do bodily harm with a caustic chemical,” and the
accompanying sentence was set for from one to fourteen years. The Court
dismissed the plea for a new trial, but allowed Bernice ten days in which to
appeal.
Finally,
after fruitless efforts to bring the case before a higher court. Bernice
surrendered. Crushed,
she had decided not to fight ay longer.
To
San Quentin Prison she went. As waitress there she served such people as Clara Phillips,
“The Hammer Girl”; Dorothy Ellingson, the jazz-crazed flapper who slew her
mother, and Mrs. Peete, convicted of slaying Jacob Denton.
The
Days, meanwhile with aversion in their hearts for Bernice, returned to Chicago.
Darby’s eye sight had been saved, but he remained badly scarred by the acid
burns.
He took immediate steps to divorce Bernice and she was
released from prison on $10,000 bail in order that she might come East and
contest the suit. The divorce was granted and the former Mrs. Darby Day, Jr.,
went back to her “home” behind prison bars.
In
Chicago, young Day was finally prevailed upon to visit a famous plastic surgeon
in an effort to eradicate the scars. Friends pleaded wit him to be lenient with
Bernice. She was in prison, but she could be pardoned or paroled. All
that was necessary was his intervention.
Darby
refused. Each glance at the reflection in his mirror made him hate her more.
Then a thought
came to him. After all, it was his scars that kept him from forgiving her. If a
surgeon could restore his face, could he not find it in his heart to do
something for Bernice?
Finally
he said, “if the surgeon gives, me back my face, I will go before the
California Board and ask them to forgive my wife and set her free.”
So
Bernice’s fate hung upon a surgical operation. After months of suspense it was
performed. It was a delicate one. Muscles, had to he shifted and skin, taken
bit by bit from the shoulder, had to be grafted upon the edges of the
incisions. Small sections of scarred epidermis must be removed from the right
eye.
By a
miracle of modern surgery, the operation was successful and Darby Day’s face,
except when scrutinized under a microscope, was just as it had been.
And
Bernice, calm and peaceful, no trace in her bearing of the former “Acid Bride,”
has been released from prison in the custody of her mother. She has gone to
Chicago to be united with her family.
But
while Bernice was working out her prison term and did not go so smoothly
with the injured bridegroom. There was, first, the suspense and agony of the
facial operation. Then there was Lady Rose Bledzo.
That
was the name the auburn-haired cabaret dancer was known by in Chicago. She was
a beautiful Mexican girl who had lived several lifetimes of hectic excitement
in her brief twenty-odd years.
At
sixteen, she was employed as a dancer in a cabaret in Mexico City.
Her
name was made the toast of the town by many ardent admirers. One, a savage
Spaniard, in a fit of jealous rage, carved a small “devil’s pitchfork” on her
cheek with his sharp, pointed stiletto.
In
order to escape from him, the little dancer fled to Texas under the protection
of another admirer. He had promised to care for her, but she received at his
hands nothing but cruelty and abuse, she declared later.
Finally,
when he stabbed her in the back, she fled to Chicago, where she lived as best
she could, dancing occasionally in obscure cabarets.
Then
she met “Yellow Kid” Weil.
Love
was indeed mated out to this poor girl in strange terms. Her latest protector
proved no more chivalrous than former ones. He ended their romance by
attempting to brand her on the cheek with the glowing end of a cigar.
By
this time, it may be imagined that Lady Bledzo had acquired a number of
well-scattered scars. She took her bruised feelings and self to a plastic
surgeon – the same one who was at the time employed in restoring Darby Day’s
good looks.
She
and Darby met.
After
a short acquaintance, Darby promised Rose —she says—three things; to pay for
her operation, to make her his “ideal,” and to marry her. Darby forgot all
three, she said.
Lady
Bledzo was annoyed at this oversight, and one evening, feigning indifference,
stepped out to dinner with another admirer. When she returned to her home, she
found Darby searching for certain love letters.
She
called to him indignantly. He then, he declared to the police, struck her and
dragged her by the hair.
And
now that Bernice has been freed from prison and looks out upon a world reopened
to her with new calm and serenity, Darby Day is facing a suit filed by Lady
Bledzo for $200,000 - $100,000 heart balm, and $100,000 skin balm.
[“Beautifying the ‘Acid Bride’ With Prison Bars,” The Sunday
Messenger (Athens, Oh.), Nov. 20, 1927, p. 24 (?)]
***
***
***
SEE: “Acid Queens: Women Who Throw Acid” for a collection of synopses of similar cases.
***
SEE: “Acid Queens: Women Who Throw Acid” for a collection of synopses of similar cases.
For more on the Heart Balm Racket, see:
***
[1176-3/23/21]
***
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