The Tragedy of a Shoemaker
A local workman, suffering from a mental health crisis, takes his own life as his wife prepares the midday meal.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Yesterday, Mr. A. Hagemeyer, a shoemaker of this city, committed suicide by hanging himself while laboring under temporary insanity. Deceased has been suffering for some time from what is generally supposed to have been softening of the brain, and it was found necessary to watch him closely for fear of accidents. Yesterday, while Mrs. Hagemeyer was preparing the noon meal, her husband went upstairs, and on going to look after him soon afterwards to her horror she found him hanging in a closet quite dead, his feet almost touching the floor. Mr. Hagemeyer was an excellent workman and was generally liked. His remains will be interred tomorrow (Friday) in the Masonic cemetery, of which order he was a member.
“Deceased has been suffering for some time from what is generally supposed to have been softening of the brain.”
In 1883, the paper framed Hagemeyer’s death as a clinical failure of the brain—a common Victorian euphemism for mental health decline. Today, the isolation of his struggle at home and the lack of accessible support for his family resonate with ongoing gaps in our behavioral health infrastructure.
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