Magdalena Bonschoff
Cincinnati Enquirer, 6 June 1879, page 4
At an early hour this morning Coroner Schoolfield, of Campbell
County Ky. received word that Mrs. Magdalena Bonschoff, a German woman living in
Dayton Ky. had committed suicide by drowning herself in a cistern. An inquiry
into the details of the case shows that Mrs. Bonschoff was arrested on Friday
last for an attack upon a little girl named Caroline Wirtz aged thirteen, the
daughter of one of her neighbors.
The girl was quite badly injured and the trial was postponed until her recovery. Last night however, she grew rapidly worse and was reported dying and this report spread rapidly and with it a good deal of indignation among the people of the portion of the town where the parents of the girl reside. Mrs. Bonschoff hearing that the girl was dead and that great indignation prevailed seems to have remembered the events of March last in the Highlands adjoining Dayton and came to the conclusion that a mob was being formed to capture here and rather than submit to this decided to put an end to her life which she did by jumping into a cistern.
Coroner Schoolfield will hold an inquest today. Further details received from Dayton by telegram at half past two this morning show that Mrs. Bonschoff's suicide was from a double motive, of regret for her attack upon the girl and to save er own children the disgrace that would attend her execution. From later accounts, it seems that it was not mob violence that she feared so much as that of the law itself in case the child died from her treatment.
It is stated that the injuries to the child were not so serious as to render her condition dangerous, except in their effect upon her nervous system, which was so shocked that she was attacked by spasms last night, causing the excitement in the neighborhood and the report that she was dying. Dr. Schoolfield, the Coroner, states that the child will probably recover.
Mrs. Bonshoff's suicide probably occurred about eleven o'clock. She had told her husband that if the girl died she had rather kill herself than have her children disgraced by her execution by the law. About midnight last night he was awakened by children crying and found her absent. He at once became much alarmed and calling in the neighbors began the search which ended in finding her body in the cistern. Prompt efforts for resuscitation were made by Dr. Schoolfield but without success as the body had evidently been in the water nearly an hour when found.