In an article published on Thursday October 19, 1911 in the New York Times it was reported that Lee De Forest had stated that ’suffrage had unfitted his wife, Nora Stanton Blatch De Forest, as a Mother.
San Francisco, Cal., Oct. 18 – In a supplemental divorce complaint filed here. Lee De Forest, the inventor of one of the wireless telegraph systems, takes several typewritten pages to show why the custody of his two-year-old daughter should be awarded to him.
Briefly, it is suffrage - “aggressive, militant and violent suffrage” – which the husband thinks has unfitted his wife for properly taking care of their child. De Forest admits that he believes in suffrage, but not to the extent to which he says his wife devotes herself to the cause.
Mrs. De Forest is the daughter of Mrs. Harriet Stanton Blatch, a Suffragist leader. In July she sued De Forest in New York for divorce, and a little later he filed a counter suit here.
In his latest complaint De Forest says that his wife has given herself so completely over to thecause of suffrage that their child is being neglected and left entirely withoout the parental affection and attention she needs. The only attention his wife has given to the child’s itellectual or moral development, De Forest says has been to teach her to say:
“Votes for women” and “Hurrah for womans suffrage.”
