The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1922-04-15
Death Letter Plans Funeral
for BOth-Writer Is Still
Kept Alive.
INFANT AWAITS BURIAL
Head of Broken Family Damns
Spiritualism for Shocking
Tragedy in Home.

Damn spiritualism, Herman Fan
cher of Newark said yesterday. What
caused the imprecation was this:
His young wife had poisoned their
baby and herself. The baby was dead.
The mother lay in the City Hospital,
protesting against efforts to save her.
Before administering the poison she
had written a twenty page letter to
her husband. She thought he would go
home from work and. finding her full
purpose accomplished. derive solace
from the letter. for it. explained that
after death she would be able to help
her husband a great deal better than
she had been able to do in life.
II will guide you and help you to
success she wrote. II will guide you
ways be right with you. Don't let
yourself get nervous. Just wait and
see If don't guide you right. Now, re-
member that baby and are going to
guide you and also to talk to you.
Baby can't talk much, but he knews
everything. so / believe he will talk
from over there to you. / want you
to start in again just as IL you had
never been married"
She had been i'll. She wrote that she
felt she had been drag on her hus-
band. The reason that she was taking
the baby was that with her gone there
would be no one to mother It. She had
partly completed white romper suit
for the little boy. she directed that 1t
be finished and used for the burial.
She gave many directions and many ex-
cuscs for her act and she requested
that every word be published in the
newspapers so that her friends would
understand.
Had Not Been Unhappy.
The husband says that spiritualism
put it all into her head. Her Illness
was not serious, so far as he knew.
1t was merely that she had not been
strong since the baby. a boy. was born.
two years ago. the ordeal of birth hav-
ing been unusually severe. They had
not been unhappy-Just the contrary.
the husband says. 1t was true they had
lost money in trying to manage a
boarding house, but that was ended and
working steadily at a good job.
Harmon Fancher is IS years old. He
grew up in Decatur, ILL.,. his wife, who
was Maud Dial. at st. Elmo. same
State. In the war he was member OF
the 124th Machine Gun Company. Thirty
third Division. They were married In
Detroit three years ago.
A few evenings later they attended a
seance presided over by medium. Mrs.
Burling. Through a trumpet lifted from
the floor by unseen hands the dead
parents of Harmon Fancher and his
wife spoke to them. That is. Mrs. Fan
cher was sure they were the parents.
one of them, her father, killed himself In
1916. and said he was sorry for 1t.
Her husband says he took no stock
In IT," but had to admit that things were
said which were hard to understand on
any other hypothesis.
That was the only seancc Fancher has
ever attended. His wife was an unques-
tioninr Spiritualist. But so far as he
knows she never saw a medium in their
three years residence in Newark.
Recently Fancher has worked for
Guaranty Egg Corporation, 10S Sylvan
avenue, Newark. a company some OF
whose stock, referred to in his wife's
letter he owns. He and Mrs. Fancher
ana lnC DdDgs 1t1iis li'Na 60 sAAS N~aO
street.
At 10 o'clock on Thursday morning
she began the letter to her husband. At
II 80 she finished 1t and gave the baby
four teaspoonfuls OF lysol. Ten minutes
later the baby died in her arms. She
laid him in the crib, said the Lords 8
Prayer and added a postscript to the
letter. Then she drank from the bottle
OF poison herself and started another
postscript, which she was not able TO
finish.
The landlord. John Borders. entered
about noon, learned from her what she
had done and telephoncd to her hus-
band and the police. Yesterday in the
hospital she asked her husband to let
her die and defended what she had
done. Her condition Is critical.
wife's Farewell Letter.
This is the letter she left for Harmon
Fancher:
DARLING BELOVED HUSBAND: ! am
writing you line of this queer suicide
and know what every ono Will say--Oh
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