The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-02-19
Method of His Lethal Experiments
The Cause Was Unrequited Affection
But He Afterwards Married the
G.rl.

Tie oIyX anu OulJ
lis last call to the grim boatman seems
likely to attract old Charon's sullen at
tention. Cheeseman's persistence in
seeking a ready exit from the stage of
life is consistent with the varied meth
DDS of his lethal experiments. Some
ct his failures were unique, notably
when he interrupted the circuit of a
live electric wire and survived the
deadly voltage of an alternating cir
cult of innumerable ohms. He has
also swallowed poison and jumped
from the promenade deck of a Southern
Pacific ferryboat. Last Saturday he
shot himself through the lungs, mar
rowly missing his heart, and the doc
tors diagnose his symptoms as fatal.
Cheeseman's first attempt on his life
was sensational. He threw himself
from an upper-story window in this
city, involving himself in two POSSIBLE
titles of successful suicide. He hoped
in the first instance to perish on the
wires Of an electric light intercepting
his descent to the pavement, which he
imagined would mangle him sufti-
GENTLY if the wire should break. 1t
happened that the wire was tenacious
and Cheesman was rescued.
His next adventure was a plunge
from a ferryboat, reckoning on the
chronic lethargy of the Southern Pa
cific to achieve his purpose. But Chees-
man could not sink. It is the custom
of the Southern Pacific officials to ar
rest people who jump from their ferry
boats and turn them over to the police.
This was the procedure IN this occa-
sion, but Cheesman, while on his way
to the station, drew a knife from his
pocket and stabbed himself three or
four times in the neck. This time his
lack of precision as an anatomist saved
him.
After his wounds were dressed they
locked Cheesman in a cell, and half
an hour later he was found hanging by
his suspenders to the grating in the
ceiling.
When he recovered his breath suffi-
GENTLY to explain Cheesman said he
would not marry him.
A few months later the old craving
came upon him again and he poisoned
himself in the basement of his par
ents' home in Lorin. Again the doc
tors interfered, this time with the
pump, and Cheesman came up smil-
ing once more out of the valley of the
shadow.
But aCheesman was still unsatisfied.
His desire for death may even be re-
garded as insatiate. A little while
after the poisoning episode he climbed
upon a windmill loftier than those at
which his prototype of La Mancha
tilted, and, probably imagining him
self an airship or a thunderbird, leap
ed head foremost into space. Death
at this time was inevitable, but a big
dog passed opportunity and Cheesman
landed safely on the animals back.
The object of these evidences OF an
insane regard, thus emphatically i'm
portuned, concluded about this time
that Cheesman was in deadly earnest
and that he meant what he said when
he averred that he would not live with
out her. Consequent y, on Sept. 70,
1892, Frank H. Cheesman and Ehe
Lambert were married.
In books the a of life Usually
ends at. the altar, but in real life 1t is
i different, and the Cheesman tragedy
was no exception to the rule of realism.
He began a new series OF tragic