The Firebug's Last Exit: A Tacoma Lodging-House Owner Hangs Himself
After firemen foiled his attempt to burn his own lodging house for insurance, Carl Haesbseche walked out before breakfast, rigged a twine noose, and stepped off a platform.
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.
TACOMA, Sept. 12.—[Special.]—Carl Haesbseche, owner of the lodging house which Chief Breummer and his men of the fire department, by being quick and alert, prevented from burning before daylight Monday morning, committed suicide this morning by hanging himself.
He was missing last night and today until found about 3 p.m. He asked his employer for advice in the matter of the burning of the building and was told he would not get his insurance if he had set the place on fire. This was the last seen of him.
The mortgages on property which the firebug tried to burn aggregate $8,000, $3,000 of which falls due shortly. He slept last night with a friend and left before breakfast to hang himself by passing a piece of twine over a rafter and tying the other end around his neck, then stepping off a platform and falling five feet. His neck was not broken, and he strangled to death. His wife and three children went to North Haven Sunday, and he told the neighbors he was going there also. He owned considerable property in addition to that which was set on fire.
“He asked his employer for advice in the matter of the burning of the building and was told he would not get his insurance if he had set the place on fire.”
Insurance fraud and crushing debt are not modern inventions; Haesbseche’s story shows how a scheme to save a building can end in a family’s catastrophe. The fire department’s quick work saved the lodging house, but the man behind it was already lost. It is a reminder that financial desperation can turn ordinary property disputes into life-and-death events.
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