Suddenly Violently Insane

In my last post I mentioned the suicide in 1907 of Ida's brother, John Lewin. I don't know why I didn't write about it when I first encountered the story several years ago, except that at the time the names didn't mean anything to me, and also in those days I did not post in such excruciating detail as I do now. But here, at last, is the story, from the Hobart Gazette of December 27, 1907:


(Click on image to enlarge)

By "a few miles southeast of town," I suspect the writer means Union Township, Porter County. While the microfilm is hard to read, the story gives a name that looks like "Sim Shearer" as the former owner of the farm where all this happened. I can't identify that precise farm, but if you look at Union Township in 1895, you will notice toward the northwest corner a Sam Shearer farm, and a bit south of that the Michael Baessler farm — owned by Michael Sr., I'm guessing, and possibly rented by Michael Jr. as early as the 1900 Census.


… Anyone else out there who (like me) has had their mind warped by reading too many true-crime books? — don't you find yourself wondering about certain aspects of this story? But I will shut up now, since one newspaper article is a very weak foundation on which to build one of my wild theories, and defame an innocent woman.