People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1893 — DEATH BY HIS OWN HAWD. [ARTICLE]

DEATH BY HIS OWN HAWD.

Ur. Roth, of Newton County, Ends Alin Else With u Butcher Knife. Special to the Pilot. Goodland, »July io—Your correspondent is again called upon to note the sudden death of another Newton county citizen, not however, by the recklessness of a - railroad company, but by his own hand. A Mr. Roth, living six or seven miles north of this place has been in rather poor health for some time. He is a large, ileshy man and the oppressive heat for the two or three days before he took his own life, made life miserable. Last Friday afternoon Roth asked to be carried out in the yard under a large shade tree in hopes of getting some relief from the terrible heat. A little

son some six or seven years old was placed near his father to fan him. After lying under the tree for about fifteen or twenty minutes Ruth complained that some large weeds near by were bothering his face and directed his son to bring him a certain butcher knife, which the boy did. On handing his father the knife, the boy turned to go away, but noticed the sick man raise the knife far above his head, and bringing it down with all his strength send the razor edged weapon into his body. The desperate man then turned the knife in his body and cut two ugly wounds in the opposite direction. Withdrawing the knife he sent it the second and third time into his body, and thus ended the terrible struggle with death. Any one of the wounds would have proved fatal, as the knife entered the heart at each blow. For ten or twelve years Roth had been engaged in the butchering business at Kentland until last spring, when he moved on a farm, where he ended his own life. Coroner Wickersham held an inquest Saturday morning about 2 a. m., and returned a verdict that death had resulted from wounds inflicted by the deceased. The knife used was one which Roth had used for a steak knife and was very thin, narrow and sharp and about 11 inches long. It had struck just a little to the right of the left nipple and had been plunged to the hilt the first two blows. Deceased was about 55 years of age and leaves a wife and six or seven children.