STRANGE DOUBLE SUICIDE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 133, 12 June 1909, Page 10

STRANGE DOUBLE SUICIDE.

WOMEN "CRANKS." The New York Daily Mail correspondent states that the Cunard offices in New York are inundated with enquiries regarding the identity of the two women — "Miss Clarke" and "Miss Miller" — who ■ committed suicide in the liner Lucania. Among the enquirers are husbands who have lost their wives, and brothers who have missed their sisters, but none of the description so far given tallies with that of the two dead women. "When people disappear^" said Mr. Walker/ "the superintendent of the passenger department, to me this afternoon, "it is surprising how many people turn up with the announcement that they are searching for missing relatives." The police are just as ignorant as the Cunard officials of the identity of the women. They deny that they sent any message whatever to Liverpool declaring the suicides to be members either of spiritualistic or suicide clubs. It is believed that the meeting of the two women was accidental, and that they svei-e both depressed and suffering from domestic and financial troubles. Apparently when the elder woman shot her- ! self the act suggested nself to the other as one which might be imitated. The Daily Chronicle writes : A new and dramatic theory regarding the mysterious suicide on the voyage from America to Liverpool, has been supplied by a passenger on the vessel. The ladies, he says, may or may not have been acquainted when they joined the ship (one of them said they were not), but it was a singular fact that each should have possessed a revolver and ball cartridges, and that each firearm should wear a secret mark, .not a trade mark. The deduction is made from this fact that the mark was the symbol of an American "suicide club,", and that both the ladies joined the ship with a deliberate purpose. He also points out th,e significance of the_ circumstance that neither of the ladies had much luggage or money with her, and that they both committed suicide under precisely similar conditions in their cabin, and reclining on the same seat. The theory that they belonged to a suicidal club was one, this gentleman asserts, which was accepted by the passengers amongst Kvhom the tragedy was discussed. ' It may be recalled that the ladies, Margaret Clarke and Helen Miller, both young, shared the same second-class cabjn, and appeared to be friends. Miss Clarke was the first to kill herself. Only 6s was found in her luggage, and there was no indication of her identity. After a day or two Miss Miller mixed freely with the other passengers, and took part in. the games on board. Then she too was found shot. She left a note to the effect that she had been worried a great deal over Miss Clarke's death, that she had been a widow for two and a half years, and wanted to en<3 her troubles.