Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/527

 "The affair of the suicide of Captain K—, which occurred at T— two days ago is not yet explainable. The letter which Captain K— left, bidding farewell to his comrades and to what had been till recently a promising career, is not enough to make the reason we lately printed (the failure of the dead officer to receive a farther advancement in rank immediately) the cause of his act …… Within a few weeks he had been melancholy, in fact quite unlike his former self. It is mentioned that a severe nervous weakness only lately disclosed, and of a kind not easily to be cured, involved the young officer in painful anxieties … The suicide was deliberately planned."

"As the one o'clock express train from Wien arrived here last night, a young man who was a passenger entered a toilette-closet of one of the carriages, and there shot himself. In dying condition, he was brought to the nearest city-hospital, but he died at eight this morning. He was identified as Richard S— who has been missing for some days from the Finance Department here. He has lately seemed in good health, and there being no question as to money-affairs or relations of a sentimental sort, the act is a mystery to the public and his friends."

To Far hack, the Year 1867, occurred a French suicide to avoid the publicity of being branded as a homosexual socially and the charge of 'public' indecorum. A popular actor of that time, Deschamps, a homosexual, was travelling one night on a railway, along with a young cuirassier named Horneck. Deschamps became sexually excited by the attractive person of the young man, and made some direct overtures to him. The latter not only repulsed them but declared that at the next halt of the train he would call an officer, and would have the actor taken into custody as "having committed an offense" in a public place—which was technically sound law. Deschamps implored mercy, but the soldier was inflexible. Deschamps opened the door of the carriage to leap out into the darkness; the train was in full speed; the angry cuirassier held him back, determined to punish his proposal, and both men in the struggle were thrown out on the track, where an approaching train at train at once struck them. Deschamps was immediately killed. Horneck