Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1876 — An Extraordinary Suicide. [ARTICLE]

An Extraordinary Suicide.

James A. Moore, aged about thirty five, living on a farm near the Farmers’ Institute, about fifteen miles south of this city, committed suicide at the Lahr House in his city last night. He leaves a wife and hree children. No cause is known for he deed. The manner in which it was accomplished is perhaps unparalleled in horrid ingenuity. He came to the Lahr House Saturday, said he was perfecting an invention, and would probably stay a week, but would visit bis home Monday, and prepaid his bill till that time. He called at the machine-shop of Harding & Sons, had a large new broad-ax and two bars Pf three inch wide by fine inch thick iron, sixteen inches long, which he had riveted to the head of the ax. On either side, fastened to these bars in the shape of a handle to an ax, he had ,tt system of wooden bars eight feet long, the extreme end of which was fastened to a cross-piece, secured to the floor by hinges. The ax was raised and held to its nearly perpendicular position'by a double cord fastened to the wall. Between the cords stood a candle, arranged so that when the candle burned down to the cords it would burn them off, and the ax fall. Where the ax would strike he placed a small box, open on one side, in which when found was his head with some cotton, which had been chloroformed. His chin was held up from his neck by a stick run across the box, through holes on either side, holding his head firmly in position. He was strapped tightly to the floor with two straps, one around his legs, another about his arms and breast The straps Were both screwed to the floor, rendering 4 itnpossible to move. It is supposed that he , set his ax, lit the candle ana strapped himself to the floor, put his head in the box with the chloroformed cotton, and was probably insensible when the ax fell. The ax and fixings would weigh about fifty pounds, and would fall a distance of from ten to fifteen feet. His head was completely severed from his body, and the ax buried in the boards beneath —Lafayette, Ltd., (June ll) Dispatch to Chicago Tribune.