The Four Days James McCutcheon Was Someone Else
A Roy butcher vanished on Sunday and reappeared near Auburn with no memory of where he had been—an early-twentieth-century case of “dual personality.”
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.
Who was James McCutcheon for four days?
As James McCutcheon, the Roy butcher, who disappeared suddenly last Sunday, he lost just four days of existence. Every circumstance indicates that he was around the country in this section, but he was not McCutcheon during those four days—at least he has no recollection of existence. It is evident he lost his own personality and was somebody else during this period.
While walking along the road near Auburn yesterday afternoon, he suddenly once more became McCutcheon, the Roy butcher. He resumed his normal personality and discovered where he was, got on an interurban and came to Tacoma, appearing at the home of his uncle, James McCutcheon, on South Thirty-eighth street.
He had not entirely recovered from the spell that had been on him when he arrived. He still seemed dazed and soon lapsed into a stupor and sound slumber. At midnight he was aroused and sent back to his home at Roy.
He said he had utterly lost the four days since Sunday. The last he knows as McCutcheon was when he was at home. He has no recollection as to under what personality he paraded during those four days, or where he went, or what he did. The days are a blank to his McCutcheon personality.
Yet it is evident he was rational and was pursuing the even tenor of his way as some personality, or he would have been discovered and taken in custody by someone.
McCutcheon is single and lives with his father at Roy. The case has attracted much attention in that section, and searching parties with hounds were out trying to locate him. All had failed, however.
Doctors say it is clearly a case of dual personality, and that McCutcheon was probably some entirely different person during those four days. Such lapses of personality are unusual, but not at all outside the observation of most doctors of long practice.
“Who was James McCutcheon for four days?”
What doctors called “dual personality” we might now describe as a dissociative fugue or another mental-health crisis. The story is a reminder that missing-person cases and psychological emergencies were once front-page mysteries, and still depend on family vigilance and luck.
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