Sidney Johnston Salisbury

Sidney Johnston Salisbury

Find A Grave Memorial ID # 81645797

San Francisco Call (San Francisco, California)
March 30, 1907 (Saturday)

"SIDNEY SALISBURY DIES AND THE CAUSE OF HIS SUICIDE IS NOT KNOWN

Gas Fumes Inhaled Destroy Life of the Son of Noted Horseman

NO ROMANCE SHOWN

His Relatives and Friends Say He Had No Serious Affair of the Heart

After a struggle lasting from 2 o'clock Friday afternoon till 5:30 yesterday morning Sidney J. Salisbury, son of Monroe Salisbury, died and gave no word of explanation concerning his desperate act of suicide. So carefully had he planned his death in the Kadee Hammam baths, at 1303 Gough street, that the fumes of gas he Inhaled through the rubber tube attached to the open jet did their work, and medical skill could not avail in the fight to keep back the spread of the fluid poison. He died while his sister, Mrs. Keyes, her husband and a physician stood silent at the bedside, the trio being powerless to stay death's hand.

It is not believed probable that the mystery of his suicide will ever be cleared. Many things conspired to render his melancholy temperament more depressed. His father, to whom he was attached with even more than a son's love, had but recently left this city, never to return. An incurable victim of a cancerous growth, Monroe Salisbury, well-known turfman, bade his son good-by several weeks ago and then journeyed to Utah, where he made his last visit to his brother, O.J. Salisbury, a Salt Lake City millionaire. From Salt Lake Salisbury, the elder, went to New York to seek some relief from the pangs of his fatal malady. He is now in that city with his daughter, T.D. Boardman. This fact undoubtedly, say Sidney Salisbury's friends, was one of the causes of his melancholia.

The effort to attach a romantic significance to the suicide is not upheld by the dead man's relatives, who say that no serious affair of the heart had caused him mental or nervous unrest. The names of many young women, some in the exclusive circles of fashionable society and some not, were mentioned yesterday, but no one was shown to have been the particular object of Salisbury's attentions, and the romantic element was not apparent in the last days of his life. That he had been drinking is certain, and also that he was depressed and unhappy when he applied at the Hammam baths for treatment, but no single reason has been suggested and accepted by his bereaved relatives and friends to explain the suicide of the popular young man of society with a wide circle of friends. The funeral will be held today at 2 o'clock from the residence of his sister, Mrs. A. D. Keyes. 2619 Divisadero Street."