Some of the newspaper reports
stated that she wore her wedding finery; others that she had draped herself in a black
silk shawl. She definitely had new shoes. But what a shock to see one end of a
length of rubber tubing in her mouth with the other end attached to a gas jet.
Gas was the means by which many
a person took his life during the late nineteenth century, and the graphic
details often appeared in big city newspapers. Most of the time, the stories
were about men: “He had suffered losses. . .” or “Recently he had a reversal of
fortune. . .” or, as my friend Mark speculates, many suicides were by gay men
who couldn’t go on in the closet or faced unrequited love.
Twenty-one year old Olga Norr
killed herself in September 1897 because she could not bear to live without her
husband, William, who had died one month earlier.
Newspaper Row, located across from City Hall, around 1900; from left to right: The World Building, the Tribune Building, and The Times Building |
A well-known journalist who
wrote for the New York Sun and New York World, specializing in baseball
and other sporting news, William Norr’s death from typhoid received a paragraph
in the papers. But Olga’s lurid story fit better with the sensationalism of the
day.
The family told a convoluted tale.
After William’s death, Olga
moved in with his mother on St. Mark’s Place. But she refused to give up the
couple’s apartment on East Thirteenth Street, and spent every day there caressing
an urn that contained William’s ashes. She intimated to her brother-in-law that
she would like to join her husband, which alarmed him. However, she also went shopping
with her sister-in-law and appeared to be in a jolly mood, so no one worried
too much.
They didn’t realize that
Olga’s happy manner was related to her plan to join William.
One day, she secretly bought
a cemetery plot, said good-bye to everyone and set off for East Thirteenth
Street.
When the police busted the
door down, they found Olga on the bed with the urn and a bundle of love
letters. Forgive me for doing this and
bringing disgrace on you all, but I find it impossible to live without Billy, she
wrote in a farewell note.
She left instructions for her
own body to be cremated and her ashes mixed with those of William. They were
buried in a Beaux-Arts columbarium in Queens. It’s not clear what became of the
cemetery plot.
After William and Olga were
safely in the columbarium, the mother decided to speak to a reporter from the New York Journal.
It turned out that after
William’s death, Olga and her late husband’s family were gathered in the parlor
on Thirteenth Street, grieving over his body. The doorbell rang and the mother
went to the door. A woman in black stood outside.
“Don’t you know me? I’m
Bella, Billy’s wife, and I want to look on his face now that he’s dead.”
The mother shrieked. She
wanted only to protect Olga from this horrible woman.
“Oh Bella. Please go away. We
thought you were dead. I never harmed you!”
During the encounter, Olga
caught sight of Bella in the hallway. “Who is that dreadful creature?” she
screamed. “What right has she to look upon his face?”
Olga seized a pistol from her
wardrobe and brandished it. The brothers-in-law took it away from her but left
it in the apartment. Not too smart.
That afternoon, Olga tried to
fling herself off the roof.
So what was the story with
Bella? The mother confided that when Billy was younger he took up with Bella,
an unsavory person. He wished to bring her home to live with the family. The
mother refused, but Billy had a persuasive way about him. Ultimately, Bella
lived in her house for about one year. Finally, the mother said they had to go.
Years later, she read that Bella
had committed suicide using belladonna. William’s mother assumed finality. After
a time, William introduced Olga as his wife, and the family loved her. Now here is Bella Norr,
knocking at the door. She told a reporter:
I
did not know of his whereabouts until I read of his death in the paper. I did
not know there was another wife until I read of this person in the paper. I
went to the house to make my claim that I am his wife and want any property he
may have had.
When the reporter told Bella
Norr that her appearance may have been the cause of Olga Norr’s suicide, she
laughed and said, ‘Well I’m his wife, and I’m going to let people know it, and
if there’s any property it belongs to me.’”
Most assuredly, William Norr
left nothing behind.
He was remembered for a series of sketches of Chinatown which he wrote for editor Charles Dana of The Sun. Apparently, Dana loved Norr’s stories so much that he urged him to publish a book, Stories of Chinatown: Sketches from Life in the Chinese Colony of Mott, Pell and Doyers Streets.
He was remembered for a series of sketches of Chinatown which he wrote for editor Charles Dana of The Sun. Apparently, Dana loved Norr’s stories so much that he urged him to publish a book, Stories of Chinatown: Sketches from Life in the Chinese Colony of Mott, Pell and Doyers Streets.
Pell Street, Chinatown, around 1900 |
When it appeared in 1892,
critics noted that Norr had immersed himself deep in the life of Chinatown in
order to write the book. In the introduction, Norr implies that he was
a regular opium user.
Bizarrely, one of the
stories, “’Round the Opium Lamp,” ends with a woman killing herself with gas
after her boyfriend has been sentenced to prison.
https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2017/07/mrs-norr-i-presume.html
Oh my God, I love this. There are so many treasures in the newspaper archives. Millions of screenplays!
ReplyDeleteOddly, I just posted my play about my grandfather's suicide in a site to site for unknown plays to be found. I don't know if I ever sent it to you, but I will