Edward Janoschek was a native of Germany; born in 1865, he emigrated to Utah as a Mormon convert in 1891, but never became a naturalized American citizen. Jesse Burke Stone was a younger man, born in Kentucky in 1900, and a day laborer through most of his adult life in Utah. Joseph Eldon Chantry was younger still, born in 1907, a native of Salt Lake City and later a resident of San Bernardino, California.

In the early 1930s, all three were involved in religious debate, public but out of the mainstream press – they remind me of some corners of the online world today: they argued sometimes bizarre questions related to Mormonism that were of little interest to the mainstream world, demanding and contradicting each other, sometimes brutally.

Janoschek was a disaffected Mormon, something of a conspiracist, whose major issue was Church finance – he accused Heber J. Grant of embezzling many millions of dollars from the Church, chiefly through having mortgaged Temple Square and other Church properties to unknown outsiders. Stone declared the Church and its leaders to be in apostasy, and focused on polygamy; I’m not certain from the little I’ve been able to find (I haven’t yet read his pamphlet mentioned below) whether he thought the Church was in apostasy for having abandoned polygamy, or for condoning secret, ongoing polygamy among Church leaders while prosecuting rank-and-file polygamists. Chantry was a fiery defender of the faith, demanding supporting evidence of claims made by Stone.

In 1930, Stone published a short pamphlet called “The Mask of Mormonism: A Challenge” in which he made a number of charges against Church leaders, many but not all related to polygamy. Some were stranger than others: According to Stone, Heber J. Grant had long ago proposed plural marriage to an Englishwoman living in Davis County, and afterward had had her declared insane and confined her to the state hospital in order to keep her from exposing his crime; she had been released from custody only when relatives in England threatened – he said – to make it an international incident. Stone also accused various Church leaders of having taken post-Manifesto plural wives. He gave no names, but said he could furnish those names upon request.

Chantry requested. Among those Stone accused of secret polygamous marriages was John A. Widtsoe, an apostle then serving as president of the European Mission. Stone provided a copy of his response to Janoschek, who used the accusation to revive a rabble-rousing periodical he had published occasionally in 1916 and 1921-22 – a publication called, ironically, The New Era. I’m posting the full text of Stone’s letter here, although Janoschek printed only the part of it accusing Widtsoe of polygamy in his “preliminary” (1 April) 1931 issue of The New Era:

Salt Lake City, Utah.
Feb. 14, 1931

Mr. Joseph E. Chantry,
468 North 3rd West,
City.

Dear Sir:

In reply to your letter of Feb 8th will inform you the name of the woman President Wilford Woodruff took to wife was Madam Lydia Von Finklestein Mountford. As for proof of this matter, there are those who will furnish such of the court should the church authorities take it to court

The party referred to on page four is Brigham H. Roberts, who took Mrs. Margaret Shipp, the wife of the late Dr. Shipp of this city. You might read Mr. Roberts’ speech on page 11-12 of my pamphlet an inform me as to how it appeals to you.

As to those mentioned on page 12 (should read 7), we might cite the cases of Apostles J.F. Smith, Jr. and John Widtsoe. The latter took a young school teacher as a plural wife, promising her his word of honor as a Latter-day Saint, to provide for her and give her a family. After a few years had gone by and his promises had gone unfulfilled, the girl inquired of him as to how she stood in his affection. He informed her that as he was then holding a high position at the University of Utah, and had an opportunity of becoming an Apostle, he therefore didn’t wish to be the father of any more children by a plural wife, for fear of exposure. I would gladly give you the name of the young woman, but she is now married to an honorable man. However, I will furnish full proof of this to the court if Mr. Widtsoe will only give me the opportunity.

I was excommunicated in the year 1928; the charge was violating the order and discipline of the church.

You have stated that failure on my part to answer your letter would be ample proof that my statements are false. Now I suggest that you say in like manner to your church authorities, Brethren, failure on your part to challenge the author of this pamphlet to prove his statement will prove you guilty or cowardly or both.

I am,

Yours respectfully,

J.B. Stone.

Remember, only the name of John A. Widtsoe was published by Janoschek in April 1931.

The charge against Widtsoe was promptly brought to the attention of the Church – the Church History Library today has a full run of The New Era, but whether the Church subscribed, or Stone delivered copies to the Church offices to be sure his charges were heard, or whether the Library collected its set years later, I do not know. All I can say is that Church leaders became immediately aware of the April 1931 accusation.

With Widtsoe away in England, he was not able to defend himself promptly; he may not even have known yet of the accusation when someone – I suspect someone in the Quorum of the Twelve, acting to protect Widtsoe – asked the Church’s attorneys (Bagley, Judd & Ray) for an opinion on whether the New Era article met the legal definition of libel, and whether, therefore, Widtsoe or the Church should sue Stone and Janoschek. The firm’s two senior partners evaluated the matter.

“There is no doubt,” they said, that the printed accusation “constitutes a criminal libel under the laws of Utah, the penalty for which upon conviction may be a fine of not exceeding $1,000.00 and/or imprisonment of not to exceed one year.” The only defense open to Stone or Janoschek in a prosecution would be that the published statements were true. They were not true, and there could be no evidence of a plural marriage that had never occurred.

But was it wise to bring a charge of libel in such a case? The attorneys pointed out a number of hazards:

First, the fact that Stone and Janoschek were undoubtedly guilty of libel by no means guaranteed a conviction: The prosecution might not take it seriously or might be poorly prepared; some jurors might think that where there was so much smoke about late polygamous marriages there must be fire, and believe the libelous charges; jurors might even be sympathetic to the defendants through a perception of imbalance of power: a day laborer and a small-time printer being seen as David to the Church’s Goliath.

“The publisher of the defamatory article, Janoschek, is obscure and practically unknown. The writer of the libelous letter, Stone, is equally insignificant,” the lawyers said. They “entertain[ed] but little doubt that each is mentally irresponsible.” (I disagree, except in the sense that I find all conspiracy theorists to be out of touch with reality to some degree. Janoschek, at least, writes coherently, making appropriate allowance for his conspiracism. English was his second language, yet the only evidence of that in his writing is an occasional spelling error in not doubling a consonant, and the very slightest sense of unexpected rhythm in his writing – the printed equivalent, I think, of a spoken accent that is so minor you have trouble identifying it — he is a competent man. Janoschek writes coherently and logically throughout The New Era – again, allowing for his belief in matters I disbelieve. I don’t think he was at all “mentally irresponsible.”)

Next, there were policy issues that the Church ought to decide, because whatever they chose to do in this case might become precedent for similar cases that would inevitably arise. The point of a prosecution for libel was not merely to punish the offender. Its primary purpose was to restore the good name and reputation of the one who had been libeled. But would a legal charge benefit Widtsoe in that regard? The spectacle of an apostle suing them would give the unknown Janoschek and Stone far greater publicity than they ever could get from their obscure publications. And that seemed to be exactly what they wanted anyway – Janoschek had complained in other articles in The New Era that President Grant had failed to respond to charges he, Janoschek, had delivered to the Church offices through registered mail. In this letter, Stone tried to goad the Church into responding by saying they were “guilty or cowardly” if they did not, and even spoke of being taken to court: “I will furnish full proof of this to the court if Mr. Widtsoe will only give me the opportunity.”

The Utah newspapers would never bother, the attorneys noted, to pay any attention to accusations made in The New Era – and indeed, I can find no trace of them in Utah’s Digital Newspapers – but “let a high official of the Church institute a criminal prosecution against these maligners, or come forth in print to refute the charges they make, such action would at once attract wide attention and be published by the Associated Press and other news agencies and heralded throughout the country.”

If Elder Widtsoe did pursue prosecution, he ran the risk of losing despite the merits of the case, and that could cause spectacular harm both to Elder Widtsoe and the Church. The Church ran the risk during any such trial that the inquiry would not be limited to the facts of this libel case but might, as had happened in the past, roam freely through an investigation of any phase of Church history or governance, reviving charges that had been disproven time and time again. A judge might give the defendants the latitude to make accusations of polygamy against others while presenting their defense here.

And even if he won, what good could a win do to Elder Widtsoe? Elder Widtsoe could hardly show that he had been damaged economically by accusations made against him to that point.The defendants were unlikely to be able to pay any fine. The notoriety of the case would do more harm to Elder Widtsoe’s name than anything The New Era could possibly do. And what would it look like for the Church to be involved in a legal case called for “proving to be false the charges which practically everybody now knows to be false”?

No, they said, the best way to deal with these accusations coming from this source was “to absolutely ignore them.”

No prosecution for libel in this instance was sought. When Stone’s full letter was eventually published making the same charge against Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr., and others, those accusations were likewise ignored.

Almost.

Two weeks after the appearance of The New Era libel, this notice appeared in the Deseret News:

Excommunication

This is to certify that at a duly called session of the High Council of the Liberty Stake of Zion, held on April 14, 1931, Edward Janoschek, theretofore a resident of the Eighth Ward in said stake, was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for conduct violative of the law and order of said Church, such conduct constituting apostasy.

D. Roy Shurtiff,
Clerk of Liberty Stake.

Salt Lake City, Utah
April 15, 1931.