Ben Gulledge, 40, Kills Self Because of Rabies, Sept. 25, 1923

Kills Himself to Escape Horrors of Hydrophobia

Raeford, Sept. 23—Death was just around the corner for Ben Gulledge, well known white man who lived about two miles from here, and he met it half way by shooting off the top of his head.

What doctors said to be the first stages of hydrophobia brought Ben to death’s door, and he decided to end it all. Ben was no coward. He endeavored to secure entrance in hospitals for treatment but none would take him. So he came back home to die. He would not prolong the agony either for himself or for his wife and four children.

There was a shot gun handy, and after neighbors who had done their best to help him had gone, Ben’s son saw him go into the bed room. He acted more strangely than ever and the boy feared for his father.

Rushing to the door of the room, the youth was horrified to see his father with gun in his hand about to end his mortal existence. The son tried to intercept the deadly weapon, but the father was determined to carry out his purpose. Turning the gun on the boy, the father sternly ordered him out, saying that life was nothing to him now, and he was going to end it all.

Hardly had the door closed behind the boy before he heard the explosion of the gun. The force of the gun blew the top of his head off.

Early in the spring one of Benn’s sons carried home a dog that had symptoms of hydrophobia [rabies]. It was tied out with the hope that it would recover. Gulledge fed the dog occasionally but did not remember to have been bitten by the dog. Finally the dog died and he forgot about it.

Friday Gulledge became seriously ill with a pain in his neck, but the physicians did not attach any particular significance to this at first. Friday night, however, they became convinced that it was hydrophobia. He was rushed Saturday morning to a Fayetteville hospital, but he couldn’t get in. The hospital there isn’t treating persons afflicted with rabies.

Then the doctors wired to Raleigh for instructions with a similar result. There was nothing for poor Ben to do but to return home to die. And there he ended it all in the afternoon, and today his wife and four children mourn for a father who was brave in death as he had been in life. He was 40 years old.

From the front page of The Monroe Journal, Sept. 25, 1923