Was It Unrequited Love?
A Woman's Theory in the Case of Young Broker Strausky's Suicide
A landlady insists a young commission broker's near-fatal shooting was an accident while cleaning his revolver, but the details — a broken dinner engagement, a rival suitor — hint at a sadder story of heartbreak.
NewsPipe summary
The Evening World · December 14, 1888 · Page 1
1 min readGustav Strausky, the young commission broker, who shot himself yesterday at Mrs. Herslck's boarding-house, 148 West Fourteenth street, is dying in St. Vincent's Hospital.
Mrs. Herslck told an Evening World reporter to-day that she was sure the shooting was an accident, as Strausky insists it was.
"Why," she said, "only twenty minutes before the shooting I was up in the hall talking to him. He was cleaning the revolver with some sweet oil and cotton, whistling at his work. I left then, and when I came back, an hour later, I found he had been taken to the hospital, mortally wounded. Oh, I was so shocked! We all thought everything of him. He was always so cheerful and good-natured."
Strausky's room was fitted up luxuriously. Though it was what is known as a "hall room," he paid $12 a week for it. His income from the estate left by his parents amounted to upward of $2,000 a year.
He had desk-room at 60 Broadway, where he did a small commission business in syrups.
It is known that Strausky intended dining with a lady at the Hoffman Restaurant last evening. He wrote to his friend, Charles Ajutz, saying he could not keep the appointment.
He was attentive to the lady for many months, until the advent of another admirer. It is thought he brooded over the slight put upon him by the lady.
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