"THE RIGHT TO DIE."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15551, 7 March 1914, Page 2 (Supplement)

"THE RIGHT TO DIE."

VETERAN'S PATHETIC CRIME.

"The right to die," a question which has agitated newspaper correspondence in America for many months, has been superseded in general interest here by the question, "Is it a sin to kill?" if such killing is done at the request of the victim, and with the desire to end an incurable disease and a life of torture and misery.

This question, which is being taken up by every big newspaper, and discussed at every fireside, was first raised recently when Judge Walling, in the Philadelphia Criminal Court, sentenced William Eberwein, an aged soldier and veteran of the American Civil War, to seven years' solitary prison confinement for killing his wife, who for yeaiß past lias suffered untold agonies from vertigo and cancer on the foot.

Eberwein is 80 years old, and his wife was 15 years younger. They had lived harmoniously together for 30 years without a quarrel of any kind. Last October however, Mrs. Eberwein was found dead, with a fractured skull, and her husband was arrested. Since then he has refused to make a statement, and it was not till he was called upon to plead in court that anyone knew that the old man was the murderer.

As Eberwein rose in the witness-box he clutched the railing with his feeble old hands for support, and in a low, shaking voice said: — "I did it because she begged me to." He then told of bis wife's long years oi sickness and suffering, how her body was covered with bruises from falling about the house in her dizzy spells, and how on the fatal October day he found her in a huddled heap at the bottom of the stairs, where she had fallen from the first landing. " I'm suffering awfully, William," the prisoner told the Court his wife said, and he added that the poor woman's moaning was pitiful.

Eberwein continued: I'll get an ambulance and take you to the hospital.' "No," she says, "I ain't got much faith in hospitals. What Nature's power can't cure no hospital doctor can cure. I'm hurt too muck, and I want to die. You do it, William."

"Do what?" I says. "End it all for me," says she.

"No, I cannot do that," says I. "It's no sin," says she, " when I'm suffering so."

I had a board in my hand that I had brought in out of the yard. I looked at her lying there, hurt so; and guessed, too, it wouldn't be a sin.

"Go on, William," says she, "go on." Then I tapped her on the head with the board, and I tapped her again. She didn't moan much, and once when 1 stopped she kind o'whispered, " Go on, it won't be long." So I kept tapping her, and she got quiet, and it seemed to me contented; and 1 knew it was all over. Then 1 was arrested and taken to prison. If 1 get out of this I want to go to an old soldiers' home, where I'll be taken care of.

In sentencing the prisoner for murder in the second degree, Judge Walling imposed the minimum number of years, but it was generally agreed that, owing to the old soldier's age, he had virtually received a sentence for life.