This post deals with a suicide, and contains historical articles describing a suicide.

Continue at your own discretion.

On the cover of the 1890 Rochester City Index and Guide Book, I took note of a name written in a unique and somewhat fanciful–albeit wobbly–hand: “Perley Ainsworth”. Alongside this name an occupation, “Steam Hydraulic Engineer” and an address, “28 Jay Street”. It seems probable that this was Perley Ainsworth’s own directory. I was intrigued enough by the gentleman’s odd handwriting that I wanted to know more about him.

---

No. 28 Jay Street

During the last years of his life, Perley Ainsworth boarded with Catherine Bunker, in the rear of her home at No. 28 Jay Street, near the corner of what is now South Plymouth Avenue.

No. 28 Jay Street, [red] the Bunker home, between Frankfort Street and Frank Street (Now North Plymouth Avenue) in 1888, where Perley Ainsworth lived until his death. No. 26 [green] also belonged to the Bunker family.

No. 28 Jay Street in 1892.  The house had two parts, and Perley Ainsworth rented the back.

This parcel now contains a cinder-block garage rear entrance for Standard Concrete Co. on North Plymouth.  Its address is No. 48 Jay Street.

---

The Tinsmith

Perley Ainsworth first appeared in the Rochester city directory in 1872. He was listed as a tinsmith, living at No. 65 Lake Avenue. His daughter, Emma Hannah Ainsworth, lived there with him.

Ainsworth’s son, Parker Halleck Ainsworth, died that year of fever in the jungles of Peru, working for a railroad company.

Perley and Emma H. Ainsworth’s address changed almost annually. In 1872, their address was No. 65 Lake Avenue; in 1873, No. 16 Marshall Street; in 1874, No. 128 South St. Paul Street; 1876, “West Avenue near St. Mary’s Hospital”; 1877, No. 16 Phelps Avenue.

Emma Hannah Ainsworth died 1878.

---

The Inventor

Apparently a tinkerer and inventor, Perley Ainsworth created two devices he deemed worthy of pursuing. One was an elliptical engine that was meant to be powerful yet inexpensively-assembled. The other, a meter for the accurate measurement of fluids such as water, gas, petroleum, et al.

Friday, September 05, 1890
https://www.newspapers.com/article/democrat-and-chronicle-a-perfect-meter/124262334/

In 1891, Perley served as director of a nascent company formed in his name to flog his inventions; the business does not seem to exist past 1892. Judging by the way he is spoken of in later articles, the business was likely a financial failure.

---

Perley Ainsworth Dies…?

On a cold March morning, a body was discovered among the bushes on Lake Avenue. It was identified as Perley Ainsworth. An article went out, describing in shockingly vivid detail the scene of the gruesome discovery:

Perley Ainsworth was framed in the article as a business failure. And perhaps he was, by the metrics of the time.

Not only that, but his personal losses had grown many of late. His son Parker Halleck had died of fever in Peru in 1872, his daughter Emma Hannah had died in 1878, leaving him alone save for his beloved wife of nearly fifty years, Frances.

His death seemed like the end of a sad but pat little life story; and indeed, it might have been, save for one problem–

It wasn’t Perley Ainsworth’s body they had found.

Poor old Perley Ainsworth was given the dubious honor of reading his own death notice in the paper. This was no glowing reminiscence of a “most useful man, to be missed” nor a rundown of grand accomplishments. Instead, the gentleman was subjected to reading a newspaper article trotting out his personal failures, a gruesome hit-piece of an obituary in which he’s framed as pathetic and his frozen body is described in lurid detail.

What’s more, he was obliged to do this in the cold, as his coal order was canceled upon news of his death–dead men need no coal, after all.

You may have reservations at this point about the sensationalistic reporting methods used to frame the act of suicide. These reservations were shared with many at the time, who worked to change this publishing practice. Journalistic standards have been shifted over the decades on the reporting of suicides for numerous obvious reasons: dignity of the victim and their surviving family being one, but a mindfulness was also developing that the aggrandizement and dramatization of taking one’s own life contributed to suicidal ideation, and that the sharing of methods and motives in the press could inspire copy-cat performances.

Suicide is a public health issue. Media and online coverage of suicide should be informed by using best practices. Some suicide deaths may be newsworthy. However, the way media cover suicide can influence behavior negatively by contributing to contagion or positively by encouraging help-seeking.

https://reportingonsuicide.org/

---

Andrew Hauser’s End

It is a sad reality from studying history that numerous stories end this way. Perley Ainsworth did not die that day, but a man named Andrew Hauser, of No. 12 Wilkins Avenue, did. There is little in the way of records for Hauser besides this, and his occupation as a basket-weaver.

This house was razed some time between 1950 and 2007; a new house was constructed there in 2010, its address No. 138 Wilkins Street.

Andrew’s son, Henry C. Hauser, apparently left Rochester two years after his father’s death, his name disappearing from the directory after 1897.

---

Can’t Get Blood Out of a Perley

Here’s an article as confounding as much as it is curious: an auction of household goods from the late residence of Perley Ainsworth, No. 28 Jay Street. A normal event, of course, save for one thing:

As of this date, October 16, 1900… Perley Ainsworth was still not dead! It seems like an odd thing to auction the last effects of a man still living–perhaps Perley was leaning into the role of his 1895 “death”, using it as an excuse to avoid paying rent. It sounds asinine, but consider this:

For four years–since 1896, that is–Catherine Bunker had been trying to collect rent from Perley Ainsworth, employing more forceful methods as Ainsworth returned with more aggressive denials. Prideful and apparently quite poor, Perley Ainsworth would thrash and strike his landlady and her nephew when they came around for his debts. Called before a judge, he seemed more put off by being misnamed Peter Ainsworth than he ever had about being pronounced a suicide by the public papers.

---

The Bunkers, in Brief

Poor Mrs. Bunker didn’t need this, surely.  Her house had been in her family’s possession since 1826, when her parents Laban and Deborah moved to Rochester.  She was last surviving among ten siblings. The 1892 death of her well-to-do brother Robert–who ran a cooperage on Frank Street–doubtless added to her financial burdens.  Asking her late sister Roseanne’s son Henry to play rent collector against a cantankerous old inventor was probably the last thing she she’s hoped to be doing in her later years.

---

Death Ends the Drama

Nobody seems to have gotten the better of the situation before death decided against Perley Ainsworth. This time, for real.

After Ainsworth’s death, Catherine Bunker did not get to enjoy too long of a reprieve. She would go to her own grave in 1904.

---

Perley’s Penmanship

I was delighted to discover a larger sampling of Perley Ainsworth’s unique handwriting in the form of multiple letters written between Perley and his wife Frances during their separate travels to visit relatives.

The above excerpt comes from a January 5, 1845 letter sent from Perley, who was staying at the new Stanwix Hall hotel in Rome, NY, built 1844. His unique hand is joined by a unique style of writing: words in succession, chained together in long sentences seemingly without punctuation or emphasis.

Frances’ handwriting, on the other hand, was a fair bit more brisk and tight–and the contents raptly emotional.

In closing, I learned more than I expected but hardly anything at all about Perley Ainsworth. He evidently had a long life with many experiences–love, travel, raising a family and losing them. It seems more fitting to think of that man in his late twenties, dashing off a letter to his wife from a hotel room, dreaming of seeing his little daughter, than to imagine the broom-shaking old inventor reading his own obituary in a cold room.

---

Supporting Gonechester

Did you enjoy what you read? Consider giving me a little tip at buymeacoffee.com/Gonechester, by way of saying “thanks!” It’s not necessary, but it certainly helps!