Suicide in Floyd County, Ind
Louisville Courier-Journal, July 18th
A rather singular case of suicide occurred yesterday morning near Greenville, Floyd County, Ind. Solomon Miller, a well known and highly respected farmer of Floyd County, in which he was born and raised, lived within three miles of Greenville. On the 8th of last April he married Miss Mary Mason, an esteemed young lady of the same neighborhood, and had apparently lived happily with her until the disagreement which is supposed to have "led to the suicide.
Yesterday morning at breakfast the young couple had a quarrel, during the course of which Mr. Miller threatened taking his own life. After breakfast, at 7 o'clock, his wife, who thought but little of his threat, went to a neighbor to make a call. She had been gone about an hour when a friend, John Sicelaff, going to the house to attend to some business, found Mr. Miller lying on the porch in a pool of his own blood, with a fearful gosh in the right side of the neck, cutting the jugular vein. The razor with which the fearful deed was committed, was lying at a short distance from the body, covered with blood. Life was extinct, as he had bled profusely.
Mrs. Miller was summoned immediately, and Mrs. Sicelaff went in search of Coroner Sinex, of Floyd County, who left last evening to hold an inquest on the body.
No cause for the deed is known other than the quarrel at the breakfast table. The couple have lived together in apparent peace, and the. suicide must have been the result of a fit of anger or aberration of mind. Miller is said to have been of a hasty and fiery temper. The young widow is deeply distressed by this sad ending to her short married life.
Miller was a member of the 13th Indiana Cavalry during the war, and bore the reputation of a good soldier, sober and faithful. Since the war he has lived in Floyd County.
This suicide, coming so closely upon the heels of the Rabold homicide, has put the community in which it occurred in a state of great excitement. It will be remembered that about a month ago a suicide occurred in Floyd County, a lady ending her life by cutting her throat with a butcher knife.
Cincinnati Daily Gazette July 19 1873

This community was shocked and saddened on Wednesday morning last when it was learned that Enock W. West, clerk in the tea store of James H. Forman, on Market Street near Bank had committed suicide by severing his jugular vein and horribly mutilating his neck with an ordinary pocket knife.

Mr. West has been i...n the employ of Mr. Formen for ten years or more, and he was an exceptionally faithful, quiet and industrious clerk. Nothing unusual has transpired to cause the suicide to commit the rash act, and Mr. Forman in going to the store Wednesday morning, and finding it closed, supposed his clerk had overslept himself or that he was ill.

Mr. James S. Peake, doing business next door, gained entrance to Mr. Forman's store from the back end, and upon going upstairs found West stretched out on a pallet in the third story of the building with his neck terribly haggled, stone dead with an ordinary pocket knike clenched tightly in his hand. The knife had been punched into both sides of the neck and the jugular vein severed.

West was a sober, modest sort of a man, and evidently his mind was unbalanced. His father died insane, and a brother has been afflicted with derangement of the mind for some time.

Deceased was a member of the No. 1 Masonic Lodge, and he was also an Odd Fellow. The Odd Fellows took charge of the body and it was interred under their aupsices. West was 38 years of age and unmarried.

New Albany Public Press. November 11, 1885. p7 c5.

Gregg Seidl About the Suicide

Enoch West's Funeral to Take Place on Friday Afternoon

Why He Cut His Throat
...
"Whether tis better in the mind to suffer the flings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them," is a problem that Enoch W. West has solved. But he can return no informing answer to this question to his surviving friends, for "when a man goeth into the grave he cometh not back" to the friend he had left in life.
But who will dare to utter blame of the unhappy man for the act that carried him out of life? For years he had lived in dread of a living death-insanity. He well knew that a father and brother and possibly other near relatives had lived this life with no ray of reason to illuminate its dark pathway. He worked at wages that forbade any hope of accumulation to protect him from an attack of illness, and with a naturally melancholly temperament he saw no light, no hope, no rest ahead. While in life he virtually walked in the dark valley. Probablt the last plaint that he uttered was: "I never felt so blue in my life." This was after 9 o'clock of the night of his suicide. And then he walked out upon the streets in an aimless sort of way; but before doing so he had been seen whetting the blade of his knife upon his hand and testing it edge upon his thumbnail as barbers test the edge of razors. The last seen of him was in the almost totally darkened grocery store in which he had been employed many years, sitting by the stove, his face buried in his hands, and doubtless considering the question of life and death.
Then he crept away without a light to the dingy pallet of old quilts and coffee sacks upon which he slept, if, indeed, he slept at all; for he had said to a lady acquaintance. "I dread the night in this gloomy building and I rarely sleep when I retire." What had he to hope for? What had he to cheer life? What had he in the future that had a single gem of radiance in it? There was always present in his sensitive mind the awful dread of insanity. Poor fellow! He was gentle, but sensitive as all men in like mental and social conditions are. And after retiring to the great, gloomy, naked room, dust-covered and filled with debris that had been thrown aside, he had onyl the darkness and his own dark thoughts as companions on his wretched pallet. There was but a knife thrust between him and the end of such awful gloom, and he made it with his own hand; the silver cord was loosed, the golden bowl was broken, and the soul of Enoch W. West was at rest. It was to him a blessed release from a weight of woe he was no longer able to carry. There is mercy only in Heaven for such a man.
His brethern of the Odd Fellows and Masonic fraternity should, and doubtless will, follow him to his eternal rest on Friday afternoon, and drop sympathetic tears upon his grave.
New Albany Daily Ledger. November 5, 1885. p4 c4.
Contributed by Gregg Seidl (Historian )

Singular Suicide
William Collins, a youth of fourteen, committed suicide by hanging himself with a bridle, on the 26th ultimo about one and a half miles from New Albany, Ind.
Date: 1838-05-24;  Paper: Public Ledge

Had to Raise Feet to Die
New Albany Ind. July 13 Despondent because he was  no longer able to work John Andrew Gebhart. 80 years of age, committed suicide by hanging himself to a rafter of a shed in the rear of his home. So Iow was the shed that the old man was compelled to raise his feet so that his weight could rest an the rope
Date: 1907-07-14; Paper: Philadelphia Inquirer