100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Monday, Dec. 9, 1918. A Schuylerville woman who’d been expelled from an Albany nursing school last month commits suicide in her dorm room this afternoon, The Saratogian reports.
Adelia Hunt and three other nursing students were expelled for breaking hospital rules, according to Dr. Harold C. Goodwin, director of the Albany Hospital Training School for Nurses. “The young woman’s expulsion, it is said, came as the result of an automobile ride,” a Schuylerville correspondent explains. It’s unclear whether all four women took part in the same ride.
Hunt and three friends – possibly the other three expelled students – spent last weekend in Schuylerville. She returns to Albany this morning to pack her belongings and is denied a chance to meet with Goodwin to discuss her chances for reinstatement.
Nursing student Catherine Bassett tells reporters that Hunt was discussing “various details of her expulsion” when “Suddenly she whipped out a 32 calibre revolver which she had concealed in her coat.”
“I am innocent of the charges,” Hunt tells Bassett before putting the gun to her head and pulling the trigger.
“The nurses who were with Miss Hunt said that her act was done so quickly, they had no opportunity to interfere,” the reporter writes.
The nurses rush Hunt to the hospital, where she dies without regaining consciousness an hour later. She is survived by her stepmother, Mrs. A.A. Hunt, who “is griefstricken over her daughter’s act and said it was the last thing in the world she had expected her daughter to do when the young woman announced her intention of returning to Albany.”
Saratogians Coming Home From Camps
“With the honorable discharge and return home of several of the soldiers from this city, who have been in the cantonments and in officers training schools, Saratogians are beginning to get the first real evidence that the war has ended,” The Saratogian reports.
Among the local soldiers starting for home is Second Lieutenant Francis J. Sullivan, a former Saratogian reporter. A 1917 draftee, he continued to write for the paper, which published his letters from Camp Devens in Ayer MA. From there he attended officers’ training school at Camp Gordon in Georgia before finishing the world war at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe OH.
The highest ranking local soldier to get his discharge so far is Major Hiram C. Todd, who has one of the longest trips remaining for him. He had been stationed at Camp Lewis, American Lake WA at the time of the armistice.
Also heading home are Second Lieutenant Theodore A Knapp of Camp Jackson in South Carolina and Second Lieutenant Leo W. Roohan of Camp Lee in Virginia.