 |
| Via Newspapers.com |
This eerie little news item appeared in the "Cleveland Plain Dealer," November 20, 1909:
The woman was later identified as Christina Schmidt, a patient at the asylum who vanished in 1891. The cause of her death was never determined, but as foul play was, for whatever reason, immediately discounted, evidently no serious investigation was ever made. To be honest, it sounds like no one was particularly interested in what happened to the poor woman.NEW YORK, Nov. 19.--Wilkie Collins never wrote a piece of fiction more uncanny than the facts revealed by the finding of charred skeleton of woman in the attic of an abandoned insane asylum at Newark.
The hospital and Essex county authorities tried today to find some solution of the mystery but the records of the asylum for the last thirty years were searched in vain for the trace of a missing patient. That the woman was an inmate of the asylum is about the only fact established.
Of all the many theories advanced. ranging from murder down, the most reasonable seems to be that the woman was trying to escape, perhaps two years ago, perhaps forty, and in lighting a match to show herself the way under the rafters in the dark, she set fire to her clothing and was burned to death.
I agree. It seems like the inmates of that asylum would get a raw deal in any trouble they had.
ReplyDeleteStrange that there's no mention of that area of the attic showing signs of a fire, or really that the whole place wasn't burned down if there had been a fire in the attic. Maybe burned off-site and the remains brought to the attic? Creepy.
ReplyDeleteBack then to be in an asylum was like being in prison with those placed there being treated in such a horrible and demeaning way. I wonder why they ruled out foul play being the suspicious little sod I am I would suspect because it was foul play done by someone of importance.
ReplyDelete