Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1897 — JUMPS TO HER DEATH. [ARTICLE]

JUMPS TO HER DEATH.

Dans;liter of Ex-Secretnry Herbert Commits Suicide. Suffering from melancholia and on the verge of nervous prostration, Miss Leila Herbert, daughter of President 'Cieveland’s Secretary of the Navy, Tuesday morning committed suicide by throwing herself from a third-story window of her father’s residence in Washington. When picked up a moment later she was still breathing, but was unconscious and died in a few moments. Miss Herbert had been an invalid for three months, suffering from an injury to her spinp caused by a fall from her horse in Virginia last September. Recently she had recovered sufficiently to be takeb out for carriage drives, but did not improve as she had hoped, and had become despondent over her condition, fearing that she would never be able-to walk firmly again. While in this mood she Often talked of suicide, and less than a week ago she expressed a wish to die rather than suffer as she was suffering. r Tuesday morning the nurse noticed Miss Herbert’s •despondent condition and endeavored to cheer her, but without result. She expected a letter from' her father, who, was traveling in Alabama, and was much worried she did not get it. Shortly before 9 o’clock-she was with her younger sister, Mrs. Micou, the latter’s mother-in-law, and the nurse, in her own room, in the front part of the third story. Suddenly she walked into the rear room, and without a word of warning threw up the sash of or.-3 of the windows and flung herself out. The distance to the asphalted yard below is about forty feet. Miss Herbert fell some distance from the wall, crushing her skull and breaking her neck.