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A Student Dropped Dead

A Student Dropped Dead image
Parent Issue
Day
30
Month
January
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

STUDENT DROPPED DEAD

From Bursting of Blood Vessel in His Head

HAD BEEN OVERWORKING

Earning His Way Through College and Cramming for Examinations

Charles H. Orr, a needy engineering student, who was working his way through the University, dropped dead at 8 o'clock Sunday morning from overwork. The immediate cause of his death was the bursting of a blood vessel in the back of his head. Saturday night he burned the midnight oil over his books after he had worked during the early evening in Campbell's barber shop on State street. His room-mate, Ross M. Corner, wakened him Sunday morning as usual. When he got up he put his had to the back of his head saying: "Oh! I have a terrible headache. Ross, something's busted in the back of my head." He lay back on the bed and became unconscious before the doctor arrived. When Dr. Darling came the young man had departed. The doctor's verdict was that he had died from the bursting of a blood vessel of the brain. 

Mr. Orr was 23 years of age and has a mother and sister at Hillsdale, Ill., 17 miles from Chicago. His father died two years ago. The young man was a member of the sophomore engineering class and paid his college expenses himself. He washed dishes at Mrs. Crittenden's boarding house for his board and at odd hours followed the trade of a barber which he had learned at his mother's barber shop at Hillsdale. A rumor was circulated that his death had been caused by poisoning, but Dr. Darling could find nothing to support the talk. Orr's mother is a poor widow and he is said to have been the only one to support her in her old age. His old Sunday school teacher, Mr. Halcomb, came to Ann Arbor at 9:30 Sunday night to take the body home to his mother. Orr roomed at 1113 College street with Ross M. Coomer. He was a faithful student and his work in the engineering department was very severe. He has been "cramming" for examinations for the last two weeks and his landlady says that he has been studying until a late hour every night. 

Short funeral services were held at 1 o'clock Monday, Rev. C.S.Patton officiating, and the remains taken to the 1:38 train, accompanied by a large number of engineering students.