Jess Elmer Stewart (1886-1913)

STEWART

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 5/5/2024 at 02:01:41

From Story City Herald February 20, 1913 (page 1)

JEWELL BARBER TAKES HAIR TONIC

HE TAKES IT INTERNALLY, HOWEVER, AND NOW HE IS DEAD

A Jewell barber tried to do what a Dayton barber did a few weeks ago--and now both of them have been buried. Their over-developed thirst for alcohol led them to drink hair tonic--which contains a large proportion of the poisonous stuff--and all the efforts of the doctors failed to bring them back to life.

The Jewell barber's name was Jess Stuart, who had lately come to the town from Dows and was employed in the Bellman tonsorial parlors. He had acted queerly for some time, which leads to the suspicion that he took the hair tonic with suicidal intent.

He was 24 years old and leaves a wife and an 18-month old baby.

From Story City Herald March 6, 1913 (page 5)

THE SAD STORY OF THE JEWELL BARBER

An Iowa newspaper of some prominence found material for a jocular paragraph in the circumstances surrounding the death of a young man who frank alcoholic preparations from a barber shop and thus practically committed suicide.

It made a regrettable mistake. There is nothing funny about the circumstance, no fund of humor to be drawn upon in suffering and deep sorrow and desperation which ends in death whether it comes by intent or through ignorance. And this case has no element of humor in it to be drawn upon by the paragrapher, however immediate his need of copy. On the contrary.

"Poor Jess." When he came to school a lad of 10, fifteen of sixteen years ago he was mild mannered rather unobtrusive little boy with a pleasant smile and a desire to please and to be loved. He was the son of a widow and back of the widowhood was the story of a husband dissipated and irresponsible. It was a hard life for her and for her children in the hard times of the middle nineties. She toiled at the washboard to keep the family together. Jess was one of these and a likable little fellow ready to run errands, anxious to be of kindly service to those who cared for him and unable to refuse those who looked on him with disfavor. A boy "easily led." Drinking was common then in the little village where he lived. It was a type of little town of a few years ago where keg parties flourished and constituted a considerable part of the social functions of the male population. And "Jess" grew up with his smile and faculty of following and his inheritance of irresponsibility in that environment.

"Poor Jess!" His fate is not a thing to crack jokes upon. Back of "Jess" and his squalid tragedy lies an invisible and to such as "Jess" and irresistible force. Back of "Jess" is that mysterious process of transmission which we term heredity; behind him lies the influences of early environment; weakness, unguarded from temptation marched hand in hand with him for boyhood and stood to look down on him in his grave and grouped behind "Jess" and his life and its failure looms the responsibility of all of us who fail in our duty to "Jess" and such as he and who by example and perhaps by companionship led him out into stress of an undertow which he had not strength to overcome. "Poor Jess!"

A pleasant, fine faced boy at 10; a lost man at 25, a pitiful thing, dead in its own degradation at 26. God help those who can smile upon or seek material for mirth in the sight.--Marshalltown Times-Republican.