The Cairo Daily Bulletin

THE SUICIDE MANIA.
Self-Slaughter or the First Vendor of Lager Beer In Cincinnati—He Inflicts Himself In the Head with a Pistol.
[From the Cincinnati Commercial]

The mania for suicide which afflicted this city last winter seems to have come upon us again with renewed intensity and virulence. As before, those attacked by this suicidal madness are Germans, and the causes hitherto developed seem entirely insufficient to account for their haste to leave this terrestrial sphere, and venture into 'that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.' Without the pretext of unusual financial trouble, and its consequent uncertainty about the future; without that foreshadowing gloom which puts friends upon their guard; without anything which might lead their associates to suspect their awful intentions, these self-murderers form their plans cooly, and with the utmost deliberation carry them out, throwing their relations into the depths of sorrow and despair, and casting a gloom over the community in which they live.

The case which we are called upon to chronicle is the suicide of Christian Schwenck, a German saloon-keeper living at 44 Thirteenth street, 61 years of age, and who is said to have enjoyed the rather remarkable distinction of having sold the first lager beer ever vended in Cincinnati. Mr. Schwenck was born in Barreuth, in Bavaria, was married at the age 23 years, and came to this country 22 years ago. His occupation since he has been a resident of the city has been principally that which we have mentioned, although of late years he has not found it particularly lucrative. The circumstances of the suicide were as follows:

Yesterday morning about 6 o'clock the old man arose and went into his saloon. Shortly afterward his wife heard the report of a pistol, and upon hurrying to the place which the sound indicated, saw her husband sitting on a chair by one of the tables of the saloon, with his low crowned silk hat jammed down over his head, and his hands hanging helplessly by his side. A closer examination revealed to the horrified woman the terrible fact that her husband was dead, with a ghastly and sickening wound through the forehead, with blood and brains oozing therefrom and trickling down over his face and clothing.