Waterbury Democrat., 1903-01-24
GAS THE CHEAPEST.
Hotel Keepers Say That Method of
 Suicide Is Least Troublesome.
More Violent Means Resorted To by Some Works Injury to Furni- ture and Causes Pecuni-
 ary Loss.


 commodities of Chicago, but gas for the purpose of suicide has never been listed among the revenue producing stocks of the local monopoly. That 1t cuts figure in dividends, however, hardly will be doubted. Several of the obscure small hotels in the downtown district have occasion to read the gas meters with protruding eyes, and yet when everything has been reckoned with in the case of aNshuffiing off of mortality by means otN gas jet it is cheaper and quieter for the house, whether or not the discount is taken advantage of before the 18th of the month, says the Chicago Tribune.
 Three or four people a year come in here to quit," said the clerk of & Madison street place which has seen its seamy side. ''It isn't pretty job at the best, but in the main we pre- fer the use of the gas jets. Luckily they are more popular than is almost any other means of egress; they don't mess things up nearly so bad as the pistol or the knife.
 For instance, you take a big man who wishes to shuffle off his coil by cutting his throat or his wrists, or by shooting himself in the head. There's mess for you. Frequently we have had men and women take the best room in the house to die in. and on one occasion the bullet that finished one fellow went through a mirror on a. $50 dresser.
 There's no such drawback to gas While it is possible for us to have $50 worth of furniture and carpets ruined | by suicide who goes by violent route, we figure that any reasonable man or woman may die in the house at a. cost not to exceed one dollar to | the house. Our rooms average about | 1000 cubic feet /of air each and ordi- nar1ly have two gas jets burning four feet an hour Within seven hours we can count upon finding suicide who | takes the gas route, and with two jets throwing off four feet each for seven hours we have the total of 56 feet. This is dirt cheap, being 5.6 cents for the job. When. one compares this with the things possible in the case of a desperate man with revolver, even LOGO feet of wasted gas is nothing" | 1t Is not so much in the hotels as in the tenements and cottages that the gas company becomes an inter- ested party to asphyxiations. In the hotels the landlord becomes respon- sible for the readings of the gas meters, and the company has it's strength in the assumption that it's jurisdiction ends with the meter. l However the joke writer may joke. only gas passing through a meter can move the dial fingers and as these fingers indicate, so the land lord must pay.
 In South Chicago the other day the gas company had an experience with a family of suicides in which the profits from the hotel form of asphyxiation were cut into heavily. A man and his wife had concluded to die and had turned on every available gas jet in the cottage, and these are supposed to have been wide open for at least five days before the smell of gas in the streets attracted the attention of the neighbors. Tn this particular case it is estimated that the killing of the man and his wife cost the gas company at least ten dollars worth of gas.
 In g. general way gas has become popular as an agency in suicide It is a handy means to the end, its one drawback being it's uncertainty, for while other means of asphyxiation, such as hanging and drowning, may lend themselves to secrecy, the open ing of the gas jet may serve to noti- fy half dozen noses within it's searching range.
 Then, too, long after the victim of gas seemingly has passed to the oth- CT side of things, busy doctor may bring him, back to all the old wor- ries from which the victim had tried to flee. There is little after effect from the condition. The worst fea- ture is the disarrangement of the stomach, extreme nausea, following the poisoning of the system. Free quently men in the construction de- partment of the gas company arc knocked out by the commercial prod- uct dispensed by them, and they sell. dom experience any unpleasant after effects.
 With relation to suicides, the gas companies occupy anomalous posi- tions. If it be ever known where a man bought revolver with which he kills himself, the man selling him the weapon most, frequently is called in to give testimony regarding the sale; with the gas companies, how ever, they take position behind the gas meter, claiming to have no au- thority beyond that industrious me- chanical contrivance.