Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1899-04-20
SUICIDES WITH ORIGINALITY.
Unique Methods Employed by Them In
Quitting the World.

Unique Methods Employed by Them In
Quitting the World.
The suicide of Count Karolyi is only
one Of many hundreds of cases of self
destruction in which it has been found
impossible to assign sufficient cause
for committing the act. The probable
ity is that in SO cases out of every
100 there never is sufficient cause, and
that the life is taken in some fit of
desperation or temporary insanity, as
the coroner's jury prefers to call it.
Another curious fact about recent sui
cides is that novelty in the methods
OF severing the link with life appears
to have weighed considerably with the
unhappy victims of disordered minds.
Perhaps the most remarkable case on
record is that of a man who, although
in position of great comfort and
ease, one day resolved to end his life,
and his methods were so complicated
that it took him nearly seven weeks
to prepare for the end. With his own
hands he built himself wooden scat
fold, consisting of four corner sup
L
painted black, except the floor of the
staging, which was blood red. Hav-
ing accomplished this work, he dug
a hole under the center of the stag
ing, buried a highly explosive mine
three feet underground, so that it
rested nine feet under the staging, to
which it was connected by wires for
firing by electricity. He then wrote to
the authorities explaining his arrange
ments and that in a certain time por-
tions of his body would be scattered
broadcast about the field in which his
scaffold was erected. Going back to
the field, he placed himself on the
mattress on the staging and touched
the button which fired the mine. In
the quantity of dramatic effect the sui
eide of a once famous steeplejack
stands without parallel. The man had
attempted to take his life by throw
ing himself into river, for which Of
Tense he was charged at police court,
and dismissed with very severe eau
ton. A few weeks afterward he wrote
to a friend living in the neighborhood,
stating he had resolved to make fur
Their attempt upon his life, and that
he intended doing so in manner
which would obviate any possibility of
his design being frustrated. Within a
few hours of the dispatch of that let
ter the body of the steeplejack was
seen hanging from the summit of the
highest steeple in his town-a steeple
he had himself repaired only a few
months previously. Women do not ap-
pear to often seek original methods of
suicide, but young woman, who had
been Tilted by her lover short time
ago, decided upon taking her life in
such a way that the country would
ring with her name, as she thought.
AS matter of fact, her terrible act
was announced in five lines by some
papers and not at all by others. The
wretched woman left her home at the
dead of night with a long coil of rope.
One end of the rope she fastened to a
buttress of bridge which ran over a
river and the other end she tied round
her ankles. She then let herself down
until her feet touched the water and
the rope was taut, when she let go
her hold and plunged into the river,
her feet being held up by the rope, in
which position she was discovered
early the next morning.-London Mail.