The Tragic End of Hugh Kohler
A shipping clerk at the Z.C. Miles Company takes his own life at the Diller Hotel, citing financial ruin and his father's disapproval.
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.
Hugh A. Kohler, a shipping clerk at the Z.C. Miles Company and former railway postal clerk, committed suicide at the Diller Hotel early yesterday morning. Kohler had checked into the hotel on Wednesday night. On Thursday, when he did not emerge, the manager and a plumber entered the room, finding it filled with gas. Kohler had attached a thirty-four-inch rubber pipe from a gas fixture to his mouth, using quilts to prop himself into a sitting position to ensure his death. Coroner Horton found letters in his pocket indicating recent financial losses and disappointment. Evidence suggests that, despondent over his situation and the reaction of his father, Kohler had been inspired by a newspaper account of a similar suicide in San Francisco. Kohler was 26 years old and had lived in Boston before coming to Seattle.
“His financial troubles made him despondent, the San Francisco Chronicle suggested a means of relief, and he followed the suggestion.”
Reporting on suicide in the 19th century was often blunt and provided precise methods, contrasting sharply with modern standards that avoid such detail to prevent copycat incidents. The Diller Hotel, like many historical Seattle landmarks of this era, reflects the transient and often lonely nature of a boom-town labor force.
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