NY ‘SPLITTY’ OF 100 YEARS AGO
Apple’s century-old divorce secrets can finally be revealed
D AVID Ackerman was a terrible husband. During his volatile marriage to wife Julia, he tried to throw her down a flight of stairs. He also told his longsuffering spouse she should support him by turning tricks. So she filed for divorce. This might have made the news in 1915 — women filing for divorce in the early 1900s were rare — except divorce records are sealed in New York state . . . for an astounding 100 years. Only one other state, Alaska, automatically seals matrimonial cases, and that’s for 50 years.
What was it like to get divorced 100 years ago? The Post combed through recently unsealed Manhattan filing, including the Ackermans’, and discovered they were easily as headline-grabbing as their modern-day counterparts. THE SPINSTER, THE SLEAZEBALL AND THE PSEUDO-SEER
Harriet Cadman, 70, was living a lonely life on Euclid Avenue in Brooklyn in the late 1800s when she struck up a correspondence with a 47-year-old Canadian author named Francis C. Wright.
Cadman was so smitten that she sent Wright $500 — worth about $12,000 today — so he could publish a book. Wright came to New York to visit his benefactress, and the pair quickly married in a Niagara Falls ceremony in November 1913.
The union was short-lived. Cadman filed for divorce a year later, citing Wright’s “character.” She accused Wright, whose real name was Frank Dutton Jackson, of “falsely and fraudulently” representing to her that he was a “respectable, honest, law-abiding and honorable man of good moral character.”
In reality, he was “a man of very bad repute,” she said.
Wright was already married to fortuneteller Ann O’Delia Diss Debar, whom Harry Houdini dubbed “one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known.”
In the 1880s, Wright and Debar traveled to England, where he was convicted of rape and burglary at Central Criminal Court in Lon- don in December 1901, historical records show.
Wright served only a fraction of his 15-year sentence at the notorious Dartmoor Prison and was still a parolee when he became pen pals with Cadman.
Cadman wrote in court papers that Wright used hypnosis to pressure her into marriage.
“She was entirely subject to his will, and he threatened her that unless she consented to a marriage with him, she would be destroyed and killed,” her suit said.
Wright’s defense? He never used hypnosis on his wife. He only gave his much-older spouse massages to “remove wrinkles and varicose veins.” Wright, who had separated from Cadman and was living in Midtown Manhattan during the divorce proceeding, asked the judge to toss the case. He argued that Cadman was the one who pushed him into the union.
“The thought of marriage never entered his head until it was suggested by her,” his filing said.
The judge wasn’t swayed, and the couple’s marriage was annulled in March 1915. THE CHEATERS WHO WERE BARRED FROM REMARRYING
Otto and Frieda Bardenheier were together for nearly 10 years when Frieda began an affair with a man named Ulric Gingras in October 1914. Frieda and Ulric continued their trysts at his West 66th Street apartment until Otto finally filed for divorce in 1915.
“At diverse places and various times, from on or about the 1st day of October 1914 and up to and including the present time, the defendant committed adultery with a male person known to this plaintiff by the name of Ulric Gingras,” according to the filing.
“Such adultery was not committed with the consent, connivance, privity or procurement of the plaintiff,” the document said.
Judge Daniel F. Cohalan chose to punish Frieda with what was a popular penalty for cheaters at the time: He barred her from remarrying.
According to the divorce decree that Cohalan signed in April 1916, “Plaintiff be at liberty to again marry during the lifetime of the defendant, the same as if the defendant were dead, and that the defendant should not be entitled to remarry during the lifetime of the plaintiff.”
Another unfulfilled wife of the era was Manhattanite Helen Floeckher.
Judge Joseph E. Newburger granted her divorce from Walter Floeckher just months after the cuckolded husband discovered his wife shacking up with an “unknown” man on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn in October 1915.
Newburger left Helen with a scarlet letter, forbidding her from remarrying, even though he allowed her ex to find a second wife.
George Washington University Law School Professor Naomi Cahn explained the punishment.
“This was a general thing: that you had committed fault in a marriage and so you would be precluded from marrying again because, after all, you might commit fault in that next marriage, too,” Cahn said. DIVORCE BY STD
Ceila and Harry Ackerman (seemingly no relation to the above Ackermans) married in Manhattan in March 1909. But when it came time for the honeymoon, there was one major problem. Harry could not consummate the union because he had a “chronic, contagious, venereal disease,” according to court papers.
“The defendant was at such time and ever since has remained physically incapable of entering into the marriage state or consummating the said marriage by reason of said venereal disease,” Celia said in court papers.
She added that Harry was aware he had an “incurable” sexually transmitted disease but “represented himself to be in good health.” That lie was grounds for divorce. After a trial, Judge Daniel F. Cohalan an-
nulled the marriage March 13, 1913.
Unfortunately for the next Mrs. Ackerman, Judge Cohalan did not bar Mr. Ackerman from remarrying. Some might say it was understandable, given the times.
“Living alone back then was almost unimaginable for women. Men didn’t want to live alone either, the idea being they were incompetent to do household chores,” said Princeton University historian Hendrik Hartog. “Living a life in a boarding house was a crummy life for a man. Marriage was an economic relationship.’’
ABUSED WIVES AND THEIR FOUL-MOUTHED HUSBANDS
The Ackerman union (between David and Julia) was a marriage made in hell. The couple said, “I do,” in November 1912, in Hobo- ken, NJ, then moved to Manhattan, where their relationship quickly soured.
“The defendant has treated the plaintiff in a cruel and inhuman manner and has repeatedly committed acts of cruelty and violence upon the plaintiff, and insulted and humiliated [her],” Julia’s case reads.
At the end of 1914, David attempted to throw his wife down a flight of stairs. A year later, he suggested she support him by becoming a “public prostitute.” He then choked her until she went unconscious, the suit said.
His favorite insults to hurl at his spouse were “bitch,” “whore,” “bum,” and “a Yiddish word meaning slut.
When their divorce was granted in 1915, David was ordered to pay Julie $4 a week in alimony, or $94 today.
Name-calling wasn’t uncommon in early 1900 separations.
David Ackerman’s contemporary Herman Haenelt hit his wife, Anna, choked her and pushed her up against a wall while calling her a “and “German slang for “dirty pig” and “piece of s--t.”
You won’t see name-calling in modern divorce filings, said leading Manhattan matrimonial lawyer Michael Stutman.
“The main reason for that is there’s a rule, and it says that a party may move to strike any scandalous or prejudicial matter that is unnecessarily inserted” into a divorce filing, Stutman said.
The rule, No. 3024 in the state’s guide to Civil Practice Law and Rules, was adopted in the 1960s.
Divorce cases also cleaned up after 2010, when New York became what is known as a “no fault” state. Before then, one spouse had to be legally “at fault” for the breakup, which led to pointed accusations of adultery, neglect, abuse and fraud.
If one of those grounds was not present, unhappy couples often cooked up complicated ruses to secure divorces.
“Lots of people colluded,” said Princeton’s Hartog.
Men would often take posed photos on a bed with a prostitute — even if he didn’t sleep with her — to try and prove that he was an adulterer and had given proper grounds for divorce. But even then, there were rules. For example, Hartog said, the man had “to have his socks off ” in the picture.
And divorces themselves were very rare — only 50 cases were filed in Manhattan Supreme Court in 1915 compared with 15,000 in 2015, even though the borough was home to 800,000 more residents a century ago.