Yesterday Judge Owens entered an order restoring Baptiste to his civilian rights. Probate Judge Gregg ordered the restoration of the funds held by the conservator. The funds were restored. He was freed from the asylum.
In Illinois the records, however, will show until a year has passed that Baptiste is insane and that he can only conduct business legally through his conservator, who can’t be removed for a year.
But Baptiste is happy--he’s on his way to Italy.
For why should the Kaminoka Strumolova Sick and Benevolent Association pay out money for burying a man who is not yet dead? For why that hearse, $8; that headstone, $35; those two funeral coaches for $11 when Leon Welfish, the dear dead one, is alive already and in his own town of Kaminoka, Galicia?
Not for often will the Kaminoka Strumolova Sick and Benevolent Association make such a fool of itself and those money spendings for the hearse, the headstone, the funeral coaches and all the rest making of Two Hu-u-ndred dollars!--to the court here by a lawyer the Kaminoka Strumolova is going for recovering. To the court by Lawyer William Schneider the Kaminoka Strumolova is going and make for getting back all that money because Leon Welfish did not have the use of it, being not at all dead and buried.
Aye-yah; it is all right enough for the hospital people in the place at Central Islip to say that there was mistaking in sending Leon Welfish to be buried by the Kaminoka Strumolova when it was not Leon at all who had died, but some one else. It’s all right to say these things, but that does not pay back the moneys for such a comfortable funeral that some one else enjoyed. Oh no. The State of New York by the courts will have to pay back those moneys for those mistakes. It is to the Court of Claims in Washington that the lawyer is going to make the State to pay up these losses by the Kaminoka Strumolova.
Came to this country from Kaminoka, which is in Galicia, which is of Austria, Leon Welfish, a young man who did not have great strength but who was honest and who would never try to cheat anybody. Came Leon Welfish by New York and he worked as tailor until one night when he didn’t work, but fell down on the sidewalk by Lewis street and they takes him to Bellevue. They looks at him for three days--observations, they calls it--and then they sends him to the State hospital for poor insane ones at Central Islip. Leon goes and everybody is sorry that he is one of the poor insane ones.