OUT OF WORK, TOOK POISON.
Jacob Kohn, Sick and Discouraged,
Ends Life With Acid.
A man, believed to be Jacob Kohn, committed suicide in room fourteen at the Plaza hotel, Missouri avenue and Delaware street, Saturday night, and the body was found at 9 o'clock yesterday morning by Sara Ridgeway, the housekeeper. Coroner George B. Thompson says that during his term of office no other Jew has taken his own life in Kansas city and that the crime is almost unknown among men of Jewish belief
Kohn, in a farewell note, directed that the Jewish Society of Kansas City take charge of his remains. The society will bury the body, but it cannot be laid in a Jewish cemetery.
Kohn's farewell note, which he wrote just before drinking carbolic acid, as the pencil left on the table bears witness, reads:
"To whom it may concern -- This is my second attempt at suicide. I
think I shall succeed this time. I am in poor health, am unable to get
work and have no friends and no money. Give my body to the Jewish
Society. -- Jake Kohn."
Mrs. Ridgeway says that Kohn came to the hotel Saturday night late and registered as John Johnson. She had never seen him before. He paid for his room. Shortly before 9 o'clock yesterday morning when a maid was unable to get into the room to tidy it, Mrs. Ridgeway, who was called in, was informed from a man who had spent the night in room 15 adjoining, that he had heard the man in room 14 groaning and rolling around during the night. Upon that statement Mrs. Ridgeway called the police, who forced the door and found the body.
Coroner Thompson was notified and sent the body to Freeman and Marshall's morgue. Not a penny was found in the clothes. There was nothing to identify the man, excepting the signature on the note. In the pocket were cards from business houses and factories in many Kansas and Oklahoma towns. Kohn was evidently a laborer and had been in these towns looking for employment.
