A Mother's Desperation in Spokane
After a family quarrel and a daughter's night away, Mrs. Jacob Schoder swallowed carbolic acid; her 18-year-old daughter Hattie found her and told the story from St. Luke's Hospital.
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.
SPOKANE, Nov. 25.—Desperate because of worry over her daughter, Mrs. Jacob Schoder swallowed two ounces of carbolic acid shortly before midnight Saturday. Racked with pain, she lies on a cot in St. Luke's Hospital fighting a grim battle with death, while her two heartbroken daughters watch beside her. Mrs. Schoder was found about half an hour after she had taken the poison by her daughter Hattie, who was just returning from a late outing.
The story of the unhappy mother was told by her daughter Hattie, a tall, handsome blonde, 18 years of age, who works for the telephone company.
“Mother was distracted,” said the girl, “because of family troubles. Everything seemed to go wrong Saturday. I stayed away all night Friday and mother took it greatly to heart. Then, too, my sister Constance quarreled with mother and has been living away from home.
“It is dreadful to think that mother should be so foolish. I came home about midnight Saturday and found her stretched on the bed in our room groaning and moaning. I felt awfully about it as I had been out having a good time. During the day we got to talking about committing suicide by using laudanum, and mother said, ‘When you want to commit suicide you want to take something strong like carbolic acid.’ Mother told me after she had taken the poison she crawled down the hall to the door of a neighbor, but did not have strength enough to make herself heard and came back to the room.”
It was reported at the hospital that Mrs. Schoder would not survive the effects of the poison. Her husband, Jacob Schoder, is a carpenter.
“Mother was distracted because of family troubles. Everything seemed to go wrong Saturday.”
A century later, the story still reads as a portrait of a family under pressure: a teenager staying out, a sibling estranged, and a parent with nowhere to turn. It also reminds us how eagerly the press once turned private despair into public copy—and how thin the safety net was for a carpenter’s family in crisis.
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