The 'Cigarette Fiend' of Port Angeles
A desperate machinist attempts suicide, citing a struggle to overcome a tobacco habit that led to severe insomnia and mental decline.
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.
A young man named J. T. Smith made a desperate attempt to kill himself today in Port Angeles. He had lived there about one month, having taken a lot on the government reserve. He came originally from Brooklyn, New York, but more recently from San Francisco, where he has a wife and child. It seems that he has been a cigarette fiend and has been trying to overcome the habit, and it has caused insomnia to such an extent as to unbalance his mind. He obtained a 44-caliber British bulldog pistol and called at the house of a Mr. Davis, a neighbor, and while sitting on a sofa in the parlor he shot himself in the right temple. The bullet ploughed along his skull and lodged back of his ear. Smith was tried for insanity and will be sent to the asylum.
“It seems that he has been a cigarette fiend and has been trying to overcome the habit, and it has caused insomnia to such an extent as to unbalance his mind.”
The moral panic surrounding 'cigarette fiends' in the 1890s reveals how society pathologized addiction and mental health challenges during this period. The use of the term 'fiend' to describe a substance user remains a harsh historical artifact of early anti-tobacco moralism.
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