River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1903-02-05
SUICIDE BY GAS CHEAPEST.
So Say Hotel Keepers Who Have Had
Guests Take. Their own Lives
in Their Houses.


listed among the revenue producing
stocks of the local monopoly. That
it cuts a 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 a shutting off OF
mortality by means of a 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 a
Madison street place which has seen
it's seamy side. 1T isn't a 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 shuttle 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 cost not to exceed one dollar to
the house. Our rooms average about
1000 cubic feet of air each and ordi-
narlly have two gas jets burning four
feet an hour. Within seven hours we
can count upon finding a suicide who
takes the gas route, and with two Jets
throwing off four feet each for seven
hours we have the total of Sc 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 a revolver, even
l,oOO 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 its
strength in the assumption that it's
jurisdiction ends with the meter.
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.
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. In 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 a general way gas has become
popular as an agency in suicide It is
a handy means to the end, it's one
drawback being its 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 mott
fly half a dozen noses within it's
searching range.
Then, too, long after the victim Of
gas seemingly has passed to the 9TH
er side of things, a busy doctor may
bring him back to all the old wor-
ries from which the victim had tried
to fee. 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. Ere
quently men in the construction de-
partment of the gas company are
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-
tons. If it be ever known where
man bought revolver with which he
kills himself, the man selling him the
weapon most frequently is called i'll
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 continuance.
King Edward "The Silver King"