Insull Out

CRIME

For lack of bail Samuel Insull spent only three of last week's seven days as a prisoner of the People. Those three days were passed in the hospital ward of the Cook County jail where the old man gradually recuperated from the fatigue of his involuntary journey back to Chicago from Istanbul (TIME, May 14).

Wearing a wine-colored dressing gown and seated in the wheel chair used by Murderess Alice Lindsay Wynekoop. he was jocular about his newly trimmed hair and mustache:

"My last haircut was more than a month ago at the expense of the Turkish Government. And I got this one in jail, too. I miss my cigars more than anything else. The doctor cut me down to two a day and I have been obeying orders."

One afternoon his son Samuel Jr. reported:

"Father was feeling a lot better today, but he was a bit peevish when I told him I could not do one favor that he asked.

"Fie said he had started reading a serial in the Saturday Evening Post while he was en route home and wanted to finish it right away. It was E. Phillips Oppenheim's story, The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent. This morning ... he asked me to have the publishers send him the concluding chapters tomorrow. I told him that could not be arranged and he grumbled a bit."

On the fourth day Samuel Insull was arraigned in Federal Court on charges of using the mails to defraud, and of infringement of the Bankruptcy Act. He pleaded neither guilty nor not guilty but submitted that he had been shanghaied from Turkey and was therefore not subject to the Court's jurisdiction.

His Federal bail had been set at $200,000 which he could not raise himself and which his attorneys could not get reduced. But his three-day imprisonment produced a strange wave of sympathy among Chicagoans whom he never knew. Putting up their property with that of Insull's few friends as security, they induced Fidelity & Casualty Co. to provide the $200,000 bond.

In a state court where charges of embezzlement awaited Insull an additional bond of $50,000 was demanded. Six private citizens stepped forward with $100,000 in real estate to pledge for his appearance at trial. One was John R. Palandech, advertising and publicity representative of foreign language newspapers. Another was Abe Salitsky, junkman, who did not know Insull and had lost $50,000 in the collapse of the Insull companies. He put up a $60,000 apartment house. To his six benefactors Sam Insull made a little speech: "I want to thank you. This is encouraging. I appreciate it more because I've only met one [Palandech] of you before."

Then he went in a taxicab to St. Luke's Hospital for a week's rest. The hospital took him in free because in his better days he had helped it with generous gifts.

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