New York Times October 25, 1925 • Less than fifteen minutes after he had taken lunch with a friend, after both had returned from attending services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, yesterday, Charles W. F. Smith, a bond broker, 29 years old, died of cyanide of potassium poisoning in his room at the Tilden Apartments, 7 Fifth Avenue.
Dr. Charles S B. Cassassan, Assistant Medical Examiner, who made an investigation, said the circumstances surrounding Smith’s death indicated a case of suicide, although the entry made on the police blotter at the Mercer Street station gave the cause of death as ‘accidental.”
Smith came here from St. Paul, Minn., some time ago., according to persons who live at the apartment, and yesterday went to church with a friend Joseph J. Hickey an insurance agent of New Haven Conn.. They finished lunch and Smith who had been a sufferer from Infantile paralysis for some years, went into the bathroom. A few seconds later, Hickey told Detective Hooks of the Mercer Street Station, Smith staggered back into the room and said he had taken the wrong medicine. Hickey and maids in the apartment administered bicarbonate of soda as an antidote, but before a doctor arrived from St. Vincent’s Hospital, Smith was dead.
George Baxter, a bachelor, 50 years old, of Forest Hills, Queens, committed suicide yesterday, leaving a note indicating his life was a failure because he never married.
Two neighbors, Otis Dodge and Joseph Milne, who had gone to visit Baxter at his home at Austin and Quality Streets, failed to find him on the ground floor. They went to the basement, where they found Baxter dead, seated in a rocking chair beside a small table on which stood an empty glass and a paper containing white powder.
A note on the table attracted their attention. It was addressed in Baxter’s handwriting to his brother, Raymond, 27 Madison Street, Jamaica, Queens. “My health is gone,” the note read, “There is no use to live, and I want to go, too.”
My advice to all young men is to get married early and settle down., Don’t go gallivanting around and lose your health,” George
Suicide in Maspeth
The Queens police also recorded yesterday the suicide of Mrs. Catherine Neczychy, 38 years old, who had lived with her husband, Andrew, and two children, at 84 Hull Avenue, Maspeth, Queens. She and her husband quarreled on October 11, according to neighbors, and she is said to have thrown acid in her husband’s face and to have left the house.
Dominic Nacones of Maspeth, hunting mushrooms in the woods at Maurice Avenue and Rowan Street opposite Mount Zion Cemetery, found her body in a clump of bushes.