, 1888-10-18
DID THE TURK MURDER HER
Beautiful Laura Schirmer Poi
sOned i'm the Sultan's Harem.
She was "a Pretty Boston GIrl---Dazzled
by the Riches OF the Grand Turk
Poison Sent Her to Her Death.

A strange, wild tale comes over the sea
from the land OF the unspeakable Turk, a
. story of such atrocious crime and cruelty
that it reads more like romance of the
days of the Arabian nights than real
happening of the year OF our Lord, 1888.
As il is the story of the foul murder of
fourteen unhappy women, one of them an
American, who not many years ago, stood
at the portals of fame it will be read with
peculiar interest in this country and the
United States government may not pass it
by without rigid bit of International in
vestigation.
1t has just crept out through friends in
Milan, where SHE was known as '.la belle
prima DONNA" that Laura Schirmer, a
Boston girl, and not many years ago
rising and popular singer on the American
opera stage, has been poisoned with
thirteen other inmates Of the harem of the
sultan of Turkey; in Constantinople. of
course, where for centuries the sack or the
bowstring has been the preroRative of the
sultan, and no one has ever been the
wiser. The matter has been kept COM
pletely secret, but the friends of the un-
happy cantatrice in Milan claim to have
undoubted evidence of this triehtful
crime, and IA leading MIanese paper has
boldly stated it as u fact According to
the story, the sultan is believed - have
been incensed at the attempts of the
American minister to Turkey, working on
behalf of Lauras friends. to get the
woman out of her gilded captivity, and so
one night poison was placed in the ice
cream furnished to the occupants of the
imperial .seraglio. and fourteen poor
were found dead in the morning. Of
course there was no inquest, no coroner's
jury, no verdict. The bodies of the VIC
Tins were hurried away to nameless
graves, and che curtain dropped. When
the dogs OF Constantinople die, their hun
cry fellows eat up their carcasses, and
women are cheaper and less precious than
dogs there, for the latter clean the streets
and keep out pestilence.
HER FUTURE WAS BRIGHT THEN.
Ton years ago, when she was only IS,
Laura Schirmer had already won proud
place among Boston s concert singers, and
bright future seemed to beckon her to
yet higher place. She was known then as
the beautiful Laura Schirmer." She
had handsome face and fascinating
manner, and her voice, light soprano,
was OF an exquisite quality. Her mother,
q Boston woman, was well-to.do, and the
daughter was reared in luxury, and had
the best musical training that Boston af-
forded.
The mother even boosted among her
HieHus tudJ MelHe llcDe Laura was
nobly horn, she being connected with the
Dutch nobility. Before her Goth year
Laura had made so marked success on
the concert stage that her friends all
urged her to study for the operatic stage,
and after years study she sang at the
Globe theatre with Charles r.. Adams in
''La Juive" and The Crown Diamonds. ="
Later on she travelled through the United
States under Strakosch, singing "Sonam.
bula,'" Lucia di Lammermoor, and other
well-known operas.
1t was then she met her evil genius, the
English tenor, Byron. She fell in love
with him, went to Europe with him. Her
friends say he married her. At any rate,
they went to Milan to sing and study. and
she made her Italian debut there. But it
was not long before the American colony
there began to talk about her un-
happy life. Her husbands greatest joy,
! they said, appeared to be to degrade the
lovely womaa who had linked her fortune
with his. He made her perform the most
menial offices, black his boots, cook his
food and other things far worse, and she,
loving him, fell easily into the slough of
womanhood. She grew coarse and reck-