Law: Litigous Leiters

When old Chicago’s Levi Zeigler Leiter died in 1904, aged 69, he left behind him a wife, a son, three daughters and $30,000,000. Born in Maryland in 1834 he arrived in Chicago at 21, got a job as bookkeeper in a wholesale dry goods house. When the Civil War broke out in 1861 Levi, then 26, was no patriotic fool. While the blood of other men his age ran red from Bull Run to Appomattox he grew so rich selling goods to the Government that in 1865 he was able to plunk $130,000 alongside Marshall Field’s $160,000 to buy partnerships in the dry-goods business that became Field, Leiter & Co. and eventually Marshall Field & Co.

Before he died he had given his son Joseph $1,000,000 as a Harvard graduation present (1891), seen him almost corner the U. S. wheat market and lose $9,750,000 (1898), become a famed horse racer and sportsman. He had seen his daughter Mary wed a Britisher who became Lord Curzon, and Viceroy of India. He had seen his daughter Marguerite marry another English title, become the Countess of Suffolk & Berkshire, and his daughter Nancy pick as her second husband Lieutenant Colonel Colin Powys Campbell of the British Army.

Had he looked beyond his own lifetime and remembered the old saw about “three generations from shirtsleeves to shirt-sleeves,” he might have expected that his descendants would fight over his money and that by diffusion if not dissipation the Leiter millions would some day become a memory.

That they did fight, Chicago remembers only too well. For eight long years Marguerite sat on one side of a courtroom flanked by various Leiter-blooded, titled British progeny, staring icily across at her brother Joseph’s bald head, demanding that the Illinois courts remove him as trustee of the Levi Leiter estate, charging incompetence and extravagance, calling for a special accounting. Sister Nancy Campbell stood by Joseph. Perhaps he had once schemed to buy the Great Wall of China and preserve it for posterity. What if he did once order 50 dozen pairs of silk socks? “I am a hard-headed American businessman,” he told the court. “While my sisters were going to Europe marrying titles, I stayed by our property and managed it.”

Finding that he had increased the estate’s working capital from $12,920,000 to $17,387,000 in the 26 years of his trusteeship the court refused in March 1931 to remove him as trustee. Six weeks later, when the special audit was completed, Joseph resigned voluntarily. Lawyers’ fees for the eight-year quarrel were $1,012,500. Joseph died in 1932. He caught cold watching horse races at New Orleans, insisted on returning to the track blanketed in a wheelchair, took pneumonia. His estate totalled approximately $1,000,000. Sister Mary died in 1906, with no sons to inherit her husband’s title. Lord Curzon married again, a Mrs. Alfred Duggan; was elevated to be a Marquess, making Mrs. Duggan a Marchioness. Sister Nancy died in 1930. Sister Marguerite lives on as the Dowager Countess of Suffolk & Berkshire. Awaiting her death for their termination are trust restrictions on part of the Leiter fortune which last week were again before the courts in Chicago.

When the widow of Levi Leiter died in 1913 she created a $600,000 trust fund of her own. She then had three living children. She provided that the income from the $600,000 should go to three selected grandsons, but the boys must live in Chicago half of each year and work for their grandfather’s estate. When the last of Levi Leiter’s own children died, the three boys would get the $600,000. But if they failed to do their duty by Chicago, the $600,000 would be divided among all the grandchildren, including seven granddaughters.

Polo-playing Tommy Leiter, 27, son of Joseph, lives in Washington, D. C. Colin Campbell, 30, son of Nancy, lives in California where he is an official in a cement machine business. Cecil John Arthur Howard, 29, son of Marguerite, lives regularly in London, is at present in California recuperating from illness. Last week all three were suing the Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust Co., trustee of the estate, asking that the Chicago residence and work provisions be vacated since there is really no work to do in connection with the Leiter estate. Named as co-defendants are Levi Leiter’s seven grandchildren.