ENDS HIS LIFE IN A VELVET BOX.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17878, 21 June 1926, Page 10

ENDS HIS LIFE IN A VELVET BOX.

“ SCATTER MY ASHES ON A ROSEBED.” JANITOR COMMITS EXOTIC SUICIDE. SAN FRANCISCO, May 11. Like a chapter from the Revelations of St John is the symbolic funeral arranged for himself by Theodore Kappel, the janitor who ended his life Sunday on a bed of roses in a velvet draped room at 774, Howard Street, by placing his head in a velvet lined box into which he conveyed gas. This afternoon at 3.30, four trumpeters will blow a silver note to mark his passing. The body will be taken to Woodlawn Cemetery and cremated. Then on some sunny day the ashes will be scattered at the dead man’s requestd over a bed of roses. The arrangements made a month before his suicide will be carried out faithfully by undertakers. Mrs F. H. Ewing, connected with the undertaking chapel, was given 11 dollars 56 cents, the remainder of his money after the expenses of the funeral had been paid and certain bequests made, which she is to hold in trust for her eight-year-old daughter, whom Kappel never saw. He did not know Mrs Ewing, and only met her while arranging his funeral. Writing of his ashes, Kappel instructed that they be “ scattered over rose beds on a bright summer’s noontide.” The four trumpeters were provided for in his will and are to be paid 26 dollars 40 cents, the union scale. The superintendent of the cemetery is given 50 dollars for scattering the ashes. The two deputy coroners who removed his body were bequeathed 5 dollars each by the philosopher, who wished everyone to be happy, and Mrs Jane Walsh, chief deputy coroner, was given 20 dollars. To the janitor of the morgue was bequeathed 5 dollars. He left 25 dollars to his landlady and 5 dollars each to the driver of the hearse and the mourners’ car. “ I am happy,” Kappel, who was fifty-five and a bachelor, wrote in his suicide notes. ’ “ Life has treated me well and I want to leave in a fitting manner.” The notes were found in a silver bowl, which, with silver condlesticks and a silver vase containing flowers, had been made to order for Kappel. A placard containing his birth and death days with an angel painted upon it and pictures of “ The End of the Trail” and “The Rainbow” were hanging upon the velvet draped wall of his lodging house quarters.