Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-01-30
HANGS HIMSELF
At Al. MSAOUSE
WHEN SIGHT FAILS
Fear of Blindness Which Had
Haunted Him from Child
hood Is Realized.

When Reinrold Lerz WAS q stripping
in Germany he made his parents light
his room at night with a candle Of lard
In futile effort to rid the lad of the
conviction that someday he would go
blind. Saturday night in the Newark
almshouse on Elizabeth avenue Reinold
Lerz. gone blind, groped his way from
his cot to a fre-escape outside the
window buckled an end of his belt
tight across his neck, knotted the free
end about the iron railing of the flight
that loomed above and then kicked
box from beneath HAS feet Night
Watchman John Burke found him
hanging dead there two hours after
ward. John Grill, of Sussex street, the
only friend he had is going to give
him decent burial.
It's a bit pathetic, the story Of Rein
hold Lerz He can't from Germany
many years ago, moved from New
York to Newark and was successful in
his trade until the nineties. The peo-
pie he lived among noticed that he was
taciturn and would say nothing about
himself. Also they noticed that he
kept a light burning all night long
in his boarding place. and in the day
time had habit of constantly blinking
his eyes.
Trouble begins Three Years Ago.
Ill DAYS fell upon Lerz three years
ago. Some of the doctors he went to
said it was auto suggestion; some 9TH
ers said it was plain cataracts Lerz
said nothing, but he knew that the
haunting nightmare of his childhood
was coming true.
The Job he had made a success for
more than forty years he gave up.
Soon he was penniless, with only the
good friend Grill standing by. But even
Grill could nat keep him from the
almshouse, and one day more than q
year ago he was sent there to live out
his life and watch himself go blind.
He was there, hopeless and discour-
aged and taciturn still, when surgeon
of the City Hospital staff, passing
among the inmates, gave the old man
the first hope he had had in all his
life.
I'VE can take those cataracts off your
ewes. I guess, Ierz,' he said. You
don't need to be going blind"
The promise was like regeneration
TO the man in the almshouse. He
frightened up and threw off twenty
years and for the first time since the
nurses knew him he was almost CARA
lous when the wagon came to take him
to the operation.
Doctor Was Mistaken.
But the doctor had been wrong In his
prophesy of hope. When Lerz was
back in the almshouse with the band
ages taken off his eyes saw as dimly
as before and grew DINNER still each
day.
Lerz had not minded so much the
fact that he had gone penniless or that
he had gone to the almshouse, but the
haunt of his blindness come true staid
beside him and the people of the aims
house could see that despite his
seventy-four years he was not going
to walt for death to come.
He said nothing to them about this,
but he waited until Saturday, when his
eyes could no longer see even the gas
light.
Then he stumbled his way to the fire
escape and strangled himself with the
belt. His one friend Grill, took his
body from Holes morgue. where the
almshouse people sent 1t. He said he
wasn't surprised that the blind man
killed him blf.