Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1892 — SARAH ALTHEA INSANE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SARAH ALTHEA INSANE.

SAID TO BE DRIVEN CRAZY BY SPIRITUALISM, The Noted Litigant Imagines She Hears Voices from Hie Other "World Through a Handkerchief— Placed Under Gentle Restraint by Friends. Now a Physical Wreck. Sarah Althea Terry, who gained such notoriety by her divorce suit against exSenator Sharon and her subsequent marriage with Judge Terry, has become insane over spiritualism. She has been very eccentric ever since Terry was shot down ’by Officer Naegle at the Lathrop eating station the moment after he slapped Justice Field’s face. The fact that the court held Naegle blameless drove her nearly insane, and this feeling was aggravated by troubles which she had with her attorney in Fresno. She claimed this attorney made love to her a*nd she produced several amatory letters he had written. This enraged him, and when she called at his office to get her law papers he brutally ejected her. To the disgrace of the Fresno courts they held that his action was justifiable. The doctor says it is a clear case of dementia due to worry over her affairs and dabbling in spiritualism. She sits for hours in one place with a pocket handkerchief rolled up and placed to her ear like the holder of a telephone. She says she gets all kinds of messages

through this handkerchief from her friends in the spirit land, aud she handed the handkerchief to a reporter who saw her and asked him if ho didn’t hear whispers coming through it. She looks very old and haggard, and her pale face is flushed with fever. Her pulse runs high, but she seems insensible to heat or cold. At night Sarah becomes very violent and calls loudly for Judge Terry and for Porter Ashe, whom she says she loves dearly, as his father, was a losom friend of Terry in early days and was arrested and confined by a vigilance committee for opposing them. Porter Ashe married Amy Crocker, but she secured a divorce after much scandal. He is well known on the turf, as he is the owner of Geraldine and other fast horses. Ho’ befriended Mrs. Terry after the shooting of her husband and is about the only one of Terry’s old friends who has been able to endure her caprices. The poor woman is a physical and mental wreck, although she is not over 40 years old. She had only a remnant of property left, Judge Terry’s estate having ben heavily mortgaged and badly managed When the Sharon divorce suit began in March, 1884, she was a remarkably handsome woman, and since then she has been almost constantly before the public. Some months ago Mrs. Terry reported to the police that $7,01K) worth of silks and laces had been stolen from her trunk. It was found that sho never had any such goods. Unless her brother, Morgan Hill, intervenes she will be sent to an asylum in a few days. No intervention is probable, as she was disowned by all her relatives long ago, and, besides, her mania is of too violent a type for her to be at large. Once handsome, in a dashing, brilliant way, Mrs. Terry is now a wreck in body as well as mind, and bears on her face lines that tell of fierce passions, a life of storm and violence, and of bitter defeat.

SARAH ALTHEA TEREY.