The Dark Story of the Gilded Age Heiress Who Fought Her Own Family in Court for Control

In January nineteen thirty-six, twenty-one-year-old Ann Cooper Hewitt told reporters her mother had paid doctors to secretly sterilize her two years earlier. The operation was disguised as an appendectomy. The motive was four million dollars. Ann's father Peter Cooper Hewitt had left two-thirds of his estate to Ann, with a clause: if Ann died without children, the money reverted to her mother Maryon. In August nineteen thirty-four, Maryon arranged for doctors to remove Ann's fallopian tubes while Ann believed she was having her appendix removed. Ann discovered the truth over a year later when an independent doctor examined her surgical scar. She sued for five hundred thousand dollars. Criminal mayhem charges were filed against Maryon and the two doctors. The criminal case was dismissed - California courts ruled sterilization wasn't mayhem under state law. The civil case settled out of court for undisclosed terms. No one was punished. Ann died in nineteen fifty-six at age forty-two, childless as her mother had ensured. Maryon died in nineteen thirty-nine. The fortune built by Ann's great-great-grandfather Peter Cooper through invention and industry was consumed by legal fees and gambling. Eugenics laws that allowed the abuse remained in effect for decades. Subscribe to see which family scandal we investigate next.
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