Sophomore Medical Girl Committed Suicide Monday

Sophomore Medical Girl Committed Suicide Monday

Miss Agnes Inglis, a Well-Known Student, Shot Herself in the Heart --- Her Act Was Probably Due to Dispondency From Overwork

With a smoking revolver in her hand Miss Agnes Inglis, a sophomore medical student, staggered into the hall on the second floor of the Alpha Epsilon Iota sorority house on Volland street Monday morning shortly after 11 o'clock and fell to the floor. Five girls who were on the first floor heard a pistol shot and a moment later the fall. They dropped their books and work and ran up stairs, and there found Miss Inglis ghastly white, with a powder-blackened spot on her waist over the heart. She murmured a few words to the girls as they bent over her and died a few minutes later.

Dr. Nancrede was at once notified, and upon his arrival he took charge of the house.

The young ladies of the sorority seemingly, were instructed by Dr. Nancrede not to say anything until the inquest, and even the earnest requests of Coroner Watts failed to elicit anything of details concerning the tragedy.

It is said, however, that she was taken sick after Thanksgiving and before Christmas and fell behind in her class work in consequence. She was a very bright student, but the work required in the sophomore medical class is sufficient to keep a person who is able to attend classes daily up to the limit of studying. The laboratory work required during the examination work together with preparing for examinations taxed her to the utmost. In the morning she attended an examination and returned to her room about 11 o'clock.

She was taking very heavy work, spending eight hours on school days and four hours on Saturday with her work on the campus, besides the work necessary in preparation.

After Dr. Nancrede had arrived he notified Coroner Watts, who summoned a jury, which will hold an inquest on Wednesday at Martin's undertaking rooms.

Dr. Nancrede says that some of the outer clothing had been removed before he got to the body and he wrote a note to the Coroner Watts stating this fact. In this note he says that, in the absence of any written or verbal testimony, it would be difficult to tell whether the tragedy was suicidal or accidental and that possibly it was an accident.

The first report, which was perhaps correct, stated that Miss Inglis had been writing some letters just immediately before the tragedy and these she left on the table. In them she stated the intention of taking her own life and that she did this because of despondency.

Coroner Watts was unable to learn anything about the letters if any exist. The young ladies refused to say anything about the affair.

Dr. Inglis of Detroit received the shocking news of the death of his daughter by means of a telephone communication about 11:30, at his office.

At first he could not believe his ears, and then, when the full force of the blow struck, he broke into sobs. He immediately left his office and hurried to his home, 24 Eliot street, Detroit, to inform Mrs. Inglis of what had happened.

Mrs. Inglis bore up bravely, and though both were all but crushed by the suddenness of their bereavement, they at once prepared to come to Ann Arbor, and left for here on the 1 o'clock train.

Miss Inglis was the oldest daughter. There are four other children.

Dr. Inglis is the well-known expert on insanity and mental disorders. He was one of the alienists summoned in the Hamburger murder trial in Detroit, and his opinion carried great weight with both court and jury in that celebrated case. He made exhaustive and special study of mental disorders and their causes.

Dr. Inglis and wife, upon their arrival in Ann Arbor, went at once to the sorority house where the remains were. They returned to Detroit with the corpse on the 11 o'clock train. The father was heart-broken and stated that while the girl had a naturally bright disposition she had despondent spells and had before threatened to shoot herself. There had seemed to be no remedy for these spells, and she has probably taken her life while in that mood. 

Miss Inglis is well known. Her peculiarity was the mannishness of her dressing. She assumed shortened skirts, box coats, short hair and masculine hats. She also parted her hair, which was marked with gray, on one side.

Miss Inglis was a graduate of Smith college and was highly cultured. She was a fine violin player.

She was prominent in athletics and was coach of the freshman basket ball team. In all gymnasium work she had always been a leader.

She was very widely known in Detroit and had many friends in social circles.

She made a visit to her parents two weeks ago and seemed perfectly happy and contented. She was of a very happy, jolly disposition, although, at times, subject to spells of mental depression and fits of melancholia.

President Angell stated yesterday that the girl was subject to these spells, and probably the death could be attributed to that.

The sorority of which Miss Inglis was a member was the Alpha Epsilon Iota. It was a medical sorority, and the following young ladies are members: Blanche C. Boyle, med., '03, Grand Rapids; Marjorie Burnham, '03, Kinsman, O.; Minnie G. Oesterbund, '04, Richmond, Va.; Velura Powell, '02, Glenwood, Iowa; Elsie S. Pratt, '04, Aspen, Col.; Lilly T. Roche, '04, Rochester, N.Y.; Mary L. Rosentiel, '04, Freeport, Ill.; Emily J. Widdicombe, '02, Kent, O.; Harriet Bigelow, lit special, Utica, N.Y.

Dean Elisha Mosher stated last evening that Miss Inglis has written no letter giving her reason for the act. The revolver used was a small one, and had it not been carefully aimed would probably not have caused serious injury.

The students who took the examination at the same time the girl did state that she looked very worried when she left the room after handing in her paper. 

Dr. Nancrede states that the girl left no written evidence that she intended to commit the act.

Agnes Inglis did not shoot herself because of the severeness of her examination Monday morning. Nor was it from overwork. The suicide was premeditated and deliberate. The young lady had been considering the matter for the past 18 months. Not only was it not hard study that caused her rash act but it was because she was afraid of it that she did the hard studying. At the Christmas vacation she contemplated the act. Sunday afternoon she sat down and wrote letters to her friends telling them of her intention. She wrote her parents and left the letter on her desk. She wrote and mailed a letter to Miss Lila Taylor, a vocalist, of Erskine street, Detroit, and requested that she sing at her funeral. This letter was received by Miss Taylor Monday morning about the time of the tragedy, and shoed that Miss Inglis planned the act to the hour.

"She ended her life because she felt that she could not successfully combat mental illness with which she has long been afflicted," said Dr. Inglis yesterday at this home, speaking of his daughter's death.

"This mental depression," said Dr. Inglis, who is himself a specialist in brain diseases, "was in simple language, an abnormal development of that sort of depression which every woman at times knowns and calls the 'blues.'

"She has been subject to these periods of mental depression from her childhood."

Always, at these times, one great regret was she had been born a girl, and then, as the years went by, this source of sorrow became deeper and deeper.

Though of excellent mental and physical powers, and the possessor of several fine accomplishments, among which was a more than ordinary mastery of music, Miss Inglis felt that her sex restricted possibility of achievement, and in consequence was much cast down.

"When she was a barefooted child," Dr. Inglis recalled, "She was subject to these fits of depression, and even then she was sorry she was not a boy. As she grew older they became more frequent and more profound. Her recourse was engrossing herself in study, music or athletics. she was not overworked in her studies at Ann Arbor, but went back after the Christmas vacation eager and happy and her last letter home was reassuring and cheerful.

"For the past 18 months, so intense was her depression, that her mother and myself knew of the danger of suicide."

It was stated that the young woman shot herself with a revolver which she carried for several months with her father's knowledge and consent. Dr. Inglis said that although his daughter did carry a revolver for a long time with his permission, yet that was not the weapon with which she killed herself, for at Christmas time when she had been having one of her blue spells, she talked with her father of her unrestrainable impulse to commit suicide and at that time her parents asked her to leave the weapon at home and she did so.

"While inducing her to leave the weapon at home I realized," said Dr. Inglis, "that as Agnes was a medical student she would not lack for means of self-destruction, and if it had not been that hard study was her only relief from mental depression we would never have allowed her to continue at college. She had always had a revolver, as a boy has a gun, being greatly interested in marksmanship and a fine shot. She must have procured another revolver on returning to college."

Her skill with the pistol accounts for the deadly precision with which Miss Inglis shot herself through the heart. Her athletic training was equal to that of many young men who have made themselves famous in college sports. She was a great swimmer. Friends who were with her last summer during part of her vacation, which was spent on the banks of the St. Lawrence river, remember days when she would swim a mile at a time without exhaustion.

As a student no task was too difficult for her accomplishment, and she was well known as a violinist. Her aim in life, however, was the study of medicine.

Her associates at school and college considered her a brilliant young woman. In 1897, the year of her graduation from the Detroit seminary, she composed the class song.

Dr. Inglis desired it made clear that overstudy was not the cause of his daughter's act.

"Her studies were a pleasure and a luxury with her, so easy and agreeable were they to her. On Saturday last she went skating, one of the several athletic sports of which she was especially fond. Then on Sunday night she wrote a letter which she left for us, saying she intended to end it all, and she asked our forgiveness for ending her life without warning, but pathetically added that she could not withstand the temptation to commit the fatal act. With her mind made up to this she went to her examinations Monday morning, and then carried out her plan."

Dr. Inglis said the mental depression his daughter had experienced from childhood was constitutional, and that she had always made a brave fight against it.

It developed yesterday that Miss Inglis would have committed suicide by taking poison if she could have secured the one particular kind she had selected and her knowledge of chemistry told her what was the most effective.

In the morning at 11 o'clock, just after passing in her examination paper, Miss Inglis went to Eberbach's drug store on State street and asked for some hydro-cyanic acid. At the same time she stated that she wished to use it in the chemical laboratory.

Miss Inglis attempted to procure hydrocyanic acid Sunday night at Mann's drug store. It was refused her. Monday morning it is learned that she came down town again and attempted to procure the acid at other drug stores. They all refused to sell it to her. She apparently was determined on self-destruction, yet her womanly nature revolted at the idea of using a revolver. It was only after she had failed in her attempt to secure acid that she mustered up the necessary courage to use the gun. It could only have been the habit of a lifetime of doing the thing that came next that caused her to go to the campus and write two hours on a hard examination with the purpose of a short time later ending it all.

Hydro-cyanic, or prussic, acid is the most deadly of poisons. Its action is so quick as to permit of no antidote and hence it is not given out except to persons with authority. Miss Inglis had no request for the poison from the professors of chemistry and at the same time the druggist was aware that there was plenty of it under the care of the dispenser at the laboratory.

She was refused and then went to her room and there resorted to the revolver which had been in her possession for so long a time.

The tragedy revealed much of the impulse that keep humanity in its accustomed path.

Dr. McMurrich, professor of nervous anatomy, to whom Miss Inglis took her examination just before her death, made the following statement:

"I have looked over Miss Inglis' examination paper. Although it is not my custom to pick out any special ones so early in the week, I did go over hers to see whether she might have been driver to her deed by failure on the examination. However, far from failing, she did well. She was one of the brightest students in the class. her work has been uniformly good. I do not think her examination could have been to blame for her death."

Dr. Eliza Mosher, dean of women at the University, and a close personal friend of Miss Inglis, said:

"Miss Inglis was not driven solely by over press of college work, to her last act. The girls who lived with her say it could not have been over study, although it is possible that her hard work for the examinations may have hastened a more than usually severe fit of despondency to which her father says she was subject."

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One of the most prosperous masonic lodges in the vicinity is the one in Dexter. Their growth has been almost phenomenal during the past year. F. Kauske is master of the lodge.

They have now thirty-five degrees ahead of them, to confer, and are planning to build a new hall.

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