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40 Greatest Stories

The Prisoner of Highland Park

Coming home in search of a vanished childhood, a writer finds one of the ghosts that haunted it was very real.
By China Galland |
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After receiving her last degree in 1925, Cosette embarked upon a solitary splurge of world travel which, punctuated by national lecture tours detailing her exploits, seems to have occupied the next six years of her life. Her journeys were given great play in the local papers: “Woman Intellectual, With Degrees and Marriage Pact, Perfectly Happy, Dr. Faust-Newton Leaves on Year’s Vacation From Husband,” reads the headline from a 1927 send-off. The article quotes Cosette:

When we were married my husband agreed that I was to do with my life what I wished … I am away in Europe and all parts of America for maybe a year, maybe longer, writing, lecturing, living my own life, and then every once in a while I go home on a visit. Then it’s all happiness without the prison-like feeling that many women protest against. I have an apartment in New York, a gift from my husband, and I keep a trunk in Paris. For there are many times when one just has to be alone and be just oneself.

Cosette returned from her voyages loaded with tales of adventure and trunkfuls of Oriental art, toys, dolls, jewelry, and exotic costumes.

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In the far background was Dr. Frank Hawley Newton, Cosette’s patient, proud, and utterly devoted husband. An early photo of Dr. Frank shows him as a boyish, square-jawed figure with smiling eyes and short, sandy hair. The couple met in 1908, when he was 23 and she 19. At the age of 92, Dr. Frank recalled, “When I met Cosette, it was the biggest thing in my life. We were stuck together. I was devoted to her — devotion not in the sense of duty, but the sense of privilege. It never occurred to me to be interested in another woman.” Nonetheless, they postponed marriage for nearly 10 years, while Cosette accumulated four degrees. Frank, in the meantime, laid the foundations of a highly successful medical career: M.D., University of Texas, 1914; associate professor of ophthalmology, Southwestern Medical School; staff member St. Paul’s, Texas Children’s and Scottish Rite Hospitals; president, Dallas County Medical Society.

Within a year of their marriage, Frank had to leave for the war. During his absence, Cosette, with financial help from her mother, purchased the big frame house on the 4000 block of Miramar, a pleasant street with large homes and trees, bounded by Lakeside Drive and Turtle Creek to the west and Highland to the east. Frank was pleased with the surprise, he remembered, and for many years, it was a peaceful home. Cosette studied law and medicine, traveled, lectured, and wrote a charming travelogue, The Rainbow-Hued Trail; Frank established himself as an ophthalmologist and respected member of the community.

Cosette, while not exactly outside Highland Park society, was not exactly in it, either. Mrs. Pat Candler, who ran a local bookstore at the time, recalls that few people really knew Cosette. She was “somebody you’d read about in the newspapers.”

The first clear sign that Cosette’s eccentricities had a dark side came in the late 1930s, during what is widely known as the “Negro in the Attic Scandal.” It was the kernel of truth from which all manner of rumors that titillated and terrified Highland Park children in the ’50s and ’60s were to grow. Cosette preferred to call the incident “The Jade Ring Theft.” When she was indicted for kidnapping, however, the 101st District Court referred to it as case No. 37608, Mickey Ricketts vs. Cosette Faust Newton.

The Times Herald, Dallas News, and Daily Dispatch all broke the news on July 30, 1938. The story: Cosette claimed her gardener, one Mickey Ricketts, had stolen one of her jade rings, a ring whose loss caused her “more pain than death.” Not one to sit idly by, Cosette allegedly took matters into her own hands, hired a private detective, had Mickey kidnapped and held for questioning in her attic.

Rumor at the time ran from speculation that Mickey Ricketts was a lover trying to escape Cosette’s grasp, to the story that it was all a setup by the Highland Park establishment to drive Cosette out. I found no evidence to support either allegation. However, newspaper photos do show that while he was Cosette’s prisoner, Mickey Ricketts’ head had been wrapped in medical bandages. When released, he was found to be suffering from a fractured jaw and malnutrition.

The jade ring case created a sensation, even making the front pages of the Denver Post when Cosette traveled there (as did deputies from the Dallas County Sheriffs Office) to run down a lead on the ring. Cosette’s version of the story was that she had been given the “invaluable” jade ring as an expression of friendship by a Chinese princess. It was a piece from the Ming Dynasty, she said, which had been in her friend’s family for countless generations. Cosette explained in a newspaper interview:

I have loved it, perhaps as one should not love an inanimate object. It became my mascot. I loved it above everything I could ever have. Its richly green beauty could relax the nerves as does a piece of ethereal music, as does a measure of verse, a rhythmic swing of prose. It was literally a part of me in that Chinese sense of love and symbols.

A more impertinent version of the story was given to the press by a former maid of Cosette’s, who recalled that her mistress never could find anything. The maid was quoted as saying:

Once when Mrs. Newton couldn’t find a pair of pajamas, Cosette called the Dallas police and asked them to call the Chicago police to have them arrest another maid who had moved to Chicago. She later found the pajamas where she had had the other maid store them. Why, the cabinet where Mrs. Newton kept her souvenirs had thousands of pieces of jewelry and junk in it, I don’t see how she could tell if there was one piece missing.

In any event, the ring was never found. The kidnapping charges were reduced to “false imprisonment,” a misdemeanor. Mickey Ricketts sued for damages, then settled out of court for $500. In February 1939 the charges against Cosette were dismissed.

Oddly, much of Highland Park society continued to find Cosette acceptable — perhaps because of the seamless respectability of Dr. Frank and, as some observers believe, a widely shared belief at the. time that whites had certain “rights” where black employees were concerned. In any event, Cosette continued to be hot copy.

• • •

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In 1932, during her sixth season of extended travel abroad and on the American lecture circuit, Cosette had become quite ill with the mumps. Because of her refusal to curtail her pace, she finally collapsed in San Francisco. She was brought back to Dallas and virtually confined to her home for almost a year while she recuperated. With extended travel now out of the question, she apparently turned her prodigious energies inward. Cosette’s choice was to reconstruct and relive her “magical” journeys, and so began a life-long process of cataloguing her vast collections and organizing them for public display.

She also began the construction of the S.S. Miramar. Cosette called this $15,000, three-decked, back-yard extravagance her “Garden Ship of Dreams.” The ship was intended to house her collections, evoke her travels, and serve as a stage for entertaining friends; it was above all to be extraordinary.

In a flyer, Cosette publicized the ship:

This huge ship consists of three spacious decks, accommodating hundreds of persons. The lower deck, which is entered from the terrace, is an oval, 48 x 29 feet. Built-in seats encircle an excellent terrazo dance floor. A steam-heated swimming pool, a rustic bar, a soft drink dispenser, fireplace and powder rooms. The S.S. Miramar is air-conditioned throughout and has microphones, recording and musical equipment. The second deck, which is the promenade, overlooks the dance floor…

Workmen began construction on the ship in 1940, and it was finished in time for the opening ball of the 1941 deb season — which, Cosette had decided, should represent its maiden voyage. Apparently Cosette had some hopes that it would launch her into the heart of Highland Park high society as well. The list of guests aboard the land-locked S.S. Miramar that first night read like the Dallas Social Register: Erle Rawlins Jr., Waldo Stewart, Lewis Grinnan, Nancy Skillern, Jim Chambers, Wirt Davis III, Mr. and Mrs. Javier Esteve, Walter Caruth, O.B. English, Dan Craddock, the Giles Millers, the Lingos, Henry Beck, Mr. and Mrs. H.R. Aldredge, Mitch Gray Gilbert, among many others.

Author

China Galland

China Galland

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