People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1893 — A SUDDEN IMPULSE. [ARTICLE]

A SUDDEN IMPULSE.

It Causes a Philadelphia Sehool-Teacher to End Her Life—For No Known Reason Miss Emma Garrett Throws Herself from a Fifth-Story Window in Chicago and is Killed. CHICAGO, July 19.— Miss Emma Garrett, principal of the home for deaf children at Philadelphia, entered the Briggs house about 6 o’clock Tuesday evening. With Miss Garrett were her sister, Mary S. Garrett, also a teacher, and Miss Viola Wilcox. After having registered the ladies were shown to room 500 on the fifth floor and on the east side of the hotel fronting the court. This court is of heavy glass set in iron framework and extends from above the second floor. Its dimensions are about 20 by 20 feet. All seemed in the best of spirits. While Night Clerk Henritze was working at his desk he was startled by hearing a heavy crash on the glass court over his head. The shock excited guests who happened to be in the corridor and the clerk darted upstairs to investigate. Screams came from room 500. Henritze burst open the door and found Mary Garrett and Miss Wilcox hysterically shrieking: “Oh, she has killed herself.” The big window on the court side was open. The clerk looked out. Away below him lying on the shattered glass roof was the bleeding body of Emma Garrett. She had entered her room with her sister and friend seemingly in a quiet and happy condition of mind. The ladies set away their valises and removed their bonnets. Miss Mary was seated in a chair and said something about the educational congresses in session at the art palace. Miss Emma walked over to where her sister was and sat down beside her. She glanced up and saw the open window. Without a word she arose and walked to it. Her two companions noticed nothing peculiar, they say. As she reached the window she laid her hands upon the sill. In an instant her face was changed. The dark eyes seemed to stand out from their sockets. With a convulsive clutch upon the wooden casing and full in the gaze of the two horrified observers with almost light-ning-like swiftness the crazed woman sprang through the window. Those she had left behind were too frightened for a moment to stir from their seats, The woman had gone to her death headforemost. Her body had partially turned as she fell, for the side of the head, as well as the top, was crushed to an almost shapeless mass. From the way she had struck death must have come on the instant. The face was almost unrecognizable. Besides the broken skull the neck had been dislocated. Blood had flowed in streams from her ears and mouth, staining the black silk dress she wore and making the sight a ghastly one. There was nothing that could be done other than to remove the body to the morgue at 73 Fifth avenue. In the short space of half an hour the woman who had reached the hotel in apparently perfect composure and happiness lay mangled in the dead house. When the sister and Miss Wilcox recovered sufficiently to speak they said that no reason could be given for Emma Garrett’s terrible act. She had never been afflicted with anything like insanity nor did it exist in the family. The ladies had come to Chicago for the purpose of attending the educational congresses and visiting the world’s fair. The hotel people seem to think that the sight of the open window might have given the woman, tired and excited by the long journey, the inexplicable impulse to throw herself out of it