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Thursday, April 20, 2023

Why Did Nannie Halstead, 26, Commit Suicide? April 20, 1923

Impatient With Life, Young Wife Suicides. . . Lays Her Plans Cunningly and Hangs in Attic of Her Home While Husband Away for Afternoon

Mrs. Nannie Halstead, 26-year-old wife of Lloyd Halstead, ended her life with a rope in the attic of their home near Weeksville in Salem Township Monday afternoon, April 15, and the secret cause of her suicide may never be known to her family and neighbors.

Lloyd Halstead and his wife were popularly regarded as one of the happiest and most enviable young couples in Salem township. Other couples often sighed and wished they might be as happy as Lloyd and Nannie Halstead. And Nannie Halstead climbed into the attic of her home in the absence of her husband and only child, and ended her young life without leaving a word of explanation behind.

The suicide was well planned. It was not a hastily conceived or impulsive act. The young woman took advantage of a time when her husband and little five-year-old boy would be away for the afternoon. Overhead in a trumpery room on the second floor of the Halstead home is a trap-door leading to the attic. It is a man’s job to lift that trap-door and climb into the attic. But the little woman got into the attic and put the trap-door back in place without leaving any evidence behind to show how she reached that trap-door 10 feet above the floor. In the attic she stood two chairs one on another, fastened the rope about one of the rafters over her head, knotted a noose about her neck, kicked the chairs out from under, and dropped to her death. Death must have been nearly instantaneous. Her body was not discovered until nearly 8 o’clock that night, stiff and cold in death. Her frantic husband held the lifeless body of his wife for two hours until the Coroner could be brought from town, no one thinking to cut the rope or disturb the body until the Coroner came.

The deed is believed to have been committed early in the afternoon. Lloyd Halstead left home about 12 o’clock that day, taking his little son with him, to go to his father’s for the afternoon. As he was preparing to leave home he noted that his wife was looking at him with a strange, pleading look, her face upturned as if hungry for a kiss.

“Want me to kiss you?” he said.

“Yes,” she replied. He stooped and kissed her. Just as he was leaving she gave him the same desirous look. He kissed her again and left her with his heart singing.

She asked him when he would be back. He told her it would be several hours. “Don’t forget to bring a bag of flour,” she said. He promised. Those were his last words.

When the young husband came home about 4 o’clock in the afternoon he found the house in order, but no evidence of his wife. He thought she had only gone to visit a neighbor and went about his work. He made another trip with his team, came back, put up his team and again went to the house to look for his wife. Still he did not find her and a feeling of uneasiness came over him. He made a search of the house and observed that everything was in order and none of her clothes were missing.

He had brought home a shad for supper. He cleaned the shad, went to the barn and fed his stock, and came back to the house. Still his wife was missing and a strange feeling of uneasiness gripped his heart. Again he searched the house. He went to the trumpery room and looked up at the trap-door in the attic. There was something about that trap-door that fascinated him as nothing had before. He wanted to climb up and open that door; but something told him to leave it alone. A second time he went back and looked up at the closed aperture leading to the attic; looked, hesitated and obeyed a strange impulse that told him to keep away.

He then telephoned to neighbors up and down the road to ask about his wife. No one had seen her. Then neighbors began to come to his assistance. Toward 8 o’clock someone suggested searching the attic. Miles Scott and John Berry, neighbors, were the first to go up. Mr. Scott was the first to discern the body suspended from the roof. He motioned everyone away and coming down told the fear-stricken husband to keep away from the attic. But the husband would not heed him. Lloyd Halstead confirmed his own worst fears and clasped the lifeless body in his own arms. There he stood in the cold, bare attic, struggling with his great grief and holding the body high to relieve the tension of the rope. It was two hours before the Coroner came and cut the body down. Doctors, accustomed to death scenes, seldom hurry in cases where they know they cannot help.

A Temperamental Woman

While no one has a suggestion of an explanation for the suicide, it is generally known that Mrs. Halstead was a temperamental girl. At times she was gay, vivacious and highly talkative. This was her usual disposition. Again she would be silent, moody and uncommunicative. Ste was that way Sunday and member of her family noted her silence. They even asked her if anything was wrong. She said nothing was wrong.

She was 26 years old. Someone has said this is the most dangerous period in a married woman’s life. It is the age when a woman first begins to realize that her girlhood and the age of sparkling romance is behind her; it is then she would live life all over again and is given to regrets that she cannot life her girlhood over with the knowledge of life that she gained too late. Women who have lived most joyously suffer the greatest mental anguish at this period. It may have been something like that that upset the mind of Nannie Halstead who loved life and spent her days on a farm by the side of the road where youth went by. Or it may have been that an attack of that mysterious malady, influenza, from which she suffered last winter, may have left her weary in body and mind as the damned thing often does. It may have been just that—or it may have been any one of a multitude of things that happen in modern homes; things the world is not permitted to see behind shutters that are closed and curtains that are drawn.

From the front page of the Elizabeth City Independent, Friday, April 20, 1923

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