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- Tampa Tribune, Florida, October 22, 1918
Wife Pinellas County Commissioner Drowned
Mrs. B.C. Bass Commits Suicide
Broods Over Child?s Death Until ?Ran My Mind Crazy? Reads Her Last Note
DUNEDIN, Oct. 21.-(Special) ? Mrs. Marian Bass, wife of County Commissioner B.C. Bass of this city, committed suicide this morning by drowning herself in Clearwater bay. Brooding over the death of her child nearly two years ago, until it ?ran my mind crazy and I can?t control it? was the reason given for the act by the woman in a note she left on a table in her home. Mrs. Bass was about twenty-eight years of age and had been living in Dudedin for years. She is survived by her husband and an infant child.
The note she left on a table, when she left the house about 9 o?clock, telling the nurse she was going shopping, was unsigned. It was addressed ?To the Public,? and read:
?When my little girl died, I started grieving and brooding and have kept it up until it has run my mind crazy and I worry over everything I hear, whether it is good, bad or indifferent. I can not sleep nor eat for worrying over my self, my husband, my baby, me people, the war and everything. I am just mad ? and without cause, for I have led a happy life. But brooding over her death ran my mind crazy and I can?t get control of it.?
Mrs. Bass apparently jumped off L. B. Skinner?s dock. No one saw the act and the first alarm was given by Robert Marston, who reported to neighbors that there was a body floating in the water by the dock. That was about 11 o?clock this morning. The sheriff called Justice of the Peace Charles Evans, who impaneled a coroner?s jury, which returned a verdict of ?suicide by drowning.? The physician who examined the body when it was taken from the water said life had been extinct for at least an hour.
Mrs. Bass had been suffering from melancholia since the death of little Martha Bass, two years ago. Recently her condition became serious and she was sent to a sanitorium at Tampa from which she returned Friday, accompanied by a trained nurse. Her condition was apparently much better and she appeared more relieved and at ease than at any time since her bereavement, which the birth of another baby a few months ago had failed to relieve.
The funeral services were held this afternoon at 4 o?clock, Rev. W.B.Y. Wilkes, officiating, and the burial was in the family plot of the local cemetery.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1887 - 1918 (31 years)