The gravestone of George Spencer Millet, erected in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, a sad monument to a bizarre death, with a story so strange that it needed to be carved in stone for posterity.
The discreet-looking block of granite is almost invisible, lost in the vast necropolis. Like many other tombstones, it is etched with the name of the deceased as well as the parents. “Georges Spencer Millet — Son of Cornelius J. and Carrie L. Millet.” But unlike any other gravestone, the front-facing side is also marked with this strange epitaph:
“Lost life by stab in falling on ink eraser, evading six young women trying to give him birthday kisses in office Metropolitan Life Building”
Epitaphs can be so clichéd!
1909 – George Spencer Millet worked as office boy for a big insurance company in the Metropolitan Life building in Manhattan. The cute, shy teenager was quite popular with his older, female coworkers. A picture of George, published after the accident in the New York Evening Telegram, shows him as a radiant blond cupid with a naïve expression and a gentle, seraphic presence.
Th celebrate the boy’s 15th birthday, a gaggle of stenographers are said to have teased George with threats of a forcible birthday kissing spree once office hours were over. Later that day, they struck, charging beaks first at the tow-headed teen who, overwhelmed and panicked, dodged the furies and fell on the floor, crying “I’m stabbed!”. One stenographers rushed to help but keeled over at the sight of the blood. Young George collapsed, unconscious in a pool of his own blood.
Confused and shocked by the tragedy of a scene that began as a Benny Hill chase, the office members called an ambulance, but poor George died on his way to the hospital. Little George had been unable to tell authorities how he got his wound.
The quiet, grotesque tragedy was written about in a story the following day. New York police opened a case to look into the circumstances of George’s death. The frolicking girls were investigated and one stenographer was even arrested for homicide, presumbaly for adminstering the kiss of death, but was released shortly after due to the lack of evidence.
The news stories recount how the incident played out, saying he was:
“stabbed in the left side, apparently as the result of skylarking in the office, and died in an ambulance on the way to the New York Hospital.”
The news articles suggest that the whole incident was shrouded in secrecy, with the first policeman noting the evasiveness of those in the office, where at the time Millet was still dying on the floor.
The autopsy gave the final answer to this strange case, however. Little George had died from his own arrow; the fatal wound was due to an ink eraser,* a little knife shaped like a bloodletting instrument, that George had placed in his shirt pocket. During the episode, the ink eraser stabbed him right in the heart, and he died from hemorrhaging, another victim of the deadly carnal passions elicited by ragtime.
And you thought you had been to regrettable office parties…imagine coming back to THAT place the following Monday.
* the ink at the time was thicker than today’s, the pens applied more of it, and the paper was less absorbent. The blade was just used to scrape dried ink off the paper.