Phillip Hoffman, Tries to Commit Suicide-1875

HOFFMAN

Posted By: cheryl Locher moonen (email)
Date: 1/2/2020 at 05:20:34

Dubuque Daily Times, Friday, Wednesday, May 05, 1875, Dubuque, IA, Page: 3

A MAN ATTEMPTS SUICIDE
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He Jumps into the Slough
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IS PULLED OUT JUST IN TIME

Last evening about half past six o’clock, a German named Phillip Hoffman, a young man about twenty-eight or thirty years of age, jumped into the slough at the foot of Tenth Street, from a raft, with intent to commit suicide. He first tied his feet with his hander kerchief, and then his hands, and jumped into the watery depths. His strange action had been notice by Will Peaslee and young Mr. Kimball, from a distance and they hastened to him, and he was pulled out of the water nearly dead, and quite senseless. Attempts at resuscitation was made, which were successful, when it was discovered that the man was in a very drunken condition, and able to give but little account of himself. Officer Hughes was notified, and he caused the man, who appeared to be a stranger, to be taken to the calaboose for safe keeping. One reporter discovered that the name of the unfortunate man is Phillip Hoffman. He came here last Saturday from Bellevue, where he had been engaged in the butchering business with his brother. He was boarding at the western House, on Clay Street. The proprietor of this house couldn’t give much information concerning the man, but said he had been working since Monday in Heeb's Brewery. From other persons, however, who professed to know something of the case, the reporter learned that there was a
“WOMAN IN THE CASE’
These parties say that while they had no knowledge of Hoffman’s intention, they had good reason to suspect that the cause which drove him to his rash act was that he had been too intimate with a girl at Bellevue that she had become pregnant by him, and was now making efforts to comply him to marry her. It was stated that the girl’s father had visited Hoffman at the brewery yesterday afternoon, and informed him that he had either got to marry the girl or suffer serious consequences. Hoffman had admitted his troubles to some of the boarders, and said that he would marry the girl, but he couldn’t go buck on another girl to whom he was engaged. He seems to have been a gay Lothario, and to have reveled in the brightest pastures. But this sweetness was too sweet to last, and the sting came and driven to desperation he “pushed to his death.” Nothing unusual had been noticed in his department or the house. He ate dinner there, but did not come to supper. He was mediating death about that time and had not for the efforts of Mr. Peaslee and Kimball he would --------the rest of the article is blurred.