Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1917 — Grandmother’s Pancakes Eaten Hastily—Five Dead. [ARTICLE]

Grandmother’s Pancakes Eaten Hastily—Five Dead.

Kankakee, 111., Jan. 30.—A meal of pancakes, hurriedly made and as hurriedly eaten yesterday morning, caused the death of five members of the Meints family on a farm between Ashkum and Danforth, 15 miles south of here. The pancakes were made by Mrs. Or K. Meirits, mother of four of the • victims and grandmother of the fifth. 'Mrs, Meints is believed to have mixed the contents of a sack containing an atsenical preparation used by her husband in taxidermy with a prepared pancake flour, thinking the powder was flour. - The dead are: Fred, 28 years old; Theodore, 26 years old; Irvin, 21 years old; Mino, 24 years old, and Clarence Meints, the grandson, 7 vears old. The fatal meal was eaten yester v day morning and by noon Fred was dead. Mino died at dawn today, the last of the five deaths. 0. E. Meints, the father, was somewhat ill and so did not eat any of the pancakes. Mrs. Meints tasted the pancakes after her sons had finished their breakfast and, noticing a peculiar flavor, ate none.