The case of D'Hauteville v. D'Hauteville (1840) illustrated the increasing tendency of judges to presume that mothers should receive custody of their children. The highly publicized litigation between Boston textile heiress Ellen Sears D'Hauteville and her husband, Swiss nobleman Baron D'Hauteville, took place in Philadelphia, where the mother had taken their two-year-old son because of Pennsylvania's favorable custody policies. The state supreme court fulfilled her expectations by rejecting the baron's argument that he enjoyed a presumptive right to custody. The court observed that "the reputation of a father ' may be stainless as crystal, he may not be afflicted with the slightest mental, moral, or physical disqualification from superintending the general welfare of the infant . . . and yet the interest of the child may imperatively demand the denial of the father's right" because "every instinct of humanity unerringly proclaims that no substitute...