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Jay Gould is dead. At 9:15 o'clock yesterday morning
the news was sent out from his home, Fifth Avenue
and Forty-seventh Street.
The end of the life of the great financier and
railroad king was not unexpected. His relatives and
friends had long feared it. The public had long
known that Mr. Gould was in very poor health. Until
midnight of Thursday, however, the information
coming from the sick room was
purposely made as encouraging as possible. Then the
physicians told the sorrowing ones around the bed of
the stricken man that they were hoping against hope,
and a bulletin was issued announcing that Mr. Gould
was rapidly sinking.
Those he loved with a love which cannot be
understood in him by those who only knew the Jay
Gould of Wall Street were with him when he passed
away. His end was as peaceful and as calm as his
domestic life had always been.
Just before the hour of death Mr. Gould rallied from
a period of unconsciousness which had lasted since
midnight. He knew what was coming. Dr. Munn, his
family physician, was seated at the bedside. He
noted the return of consciousness and leaned over
the dying man. Mr. Gould whispered to the physician
that he wished to once more see and take the hands
of those of his household.
In the room, besides the physicians and nurses, were
Mr. and Mrs. George Gould, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Gould,
Howard and Harold Gould, Miss Helen and Miss Annie
Gould, Mrs. Dr. George F. Shrady, the mother of Mrs.
Edwin Gould, and Mrs. Terry, the housekeeper, who
has so long been in the employ of the Goulds that
she has become as one of the family. They had been
sitting there all the night. When Drs. Munn and
Janeway told them the end was near and that in the
return of consciousness Mr. Gould had asked for
them, they went to the bedside.
It is said that, while at this moment Mr. Gould was
unable to speak above a whisper, his mind was clear.
His eyes brightened as his family gathered about
him. As each bent over him he whispered a few words
and smiled as he received the parting caresses. It
was thus he passed away.
Mr. Gould's death was due to pulmonary consumption.
The immediate cause of death was a hemorrhage from
the lungs. This cannot be stated on the authority of
the physicians who attended him, for they refuse to
speak. The formal certificate filed in the Bureau of
Vital Statistics, however, gave the cause of death
as phthisis pulmonalic, or consumption.
Mr. Gould's death caused no unusual excitement in
the vicinity of his house. Passers-by stopped for
the moment, attracted by the fluttering crape on the
doorbell, by the drawn blinds in the windows, or by
the presence of the undertaker's wagon, to ask if
Mr. Gould had died. Now and again a carriage would
draw up at the curb, bringing friends, who were
admitted, but who, as a rule, staid only a few
moments.
On Wall Street and throughout the city generally the
death of Mr. Gould became the absorbing topic of
conversation. At the same time it created no
noticeable excitement in other ways. Those who had
predicted a slump in the stock market as one of the
consequences of the great stock manipulator's death
proved to be false prophets.
Mr. Gould will be buried on Monday. The services
will be held at the Fifth Avenue house. They will be
characterized by the greatest simplicity. It has not
yet been settled whether the hour will be 10 o'clock
in the morning or 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The
Rev. John R. Paxton of the West Presbyterian Church,
Forty-second Street, between Fifth and Sixth
Avenues, at which Mr. Gould was an attendant, will
officiate, assisted by Chancellor MacCracken of the
University of New York and the Rev. Roderick Terry.
The body will be taken to Woodlawn Cemetery and
there placed in the splendid granite mausoleum which
Mr. Gould had built ten years ago and where the
body of his wife now rests.
The names of those who will act as pall bearers at
the funeral were not announced yesterday, but
friends of the family said they would in all
probability include C.P. Huntington, F. K. Hain, Dr.
Norvin Green, Russell Sage, and John F. Dillon.
Word was received at the Gould offices in the
Western Union Building that a number of the Western
officials of the Gould roads and friends in Western
cities would come East to attend the funeral.
The first news of Mr. Gould's death was brought from
the house by a messenger boy. He had been sent out
by Dr. Munn to telegraph to Mrs. Munn that the end
had come. As he ran to the telegraph office the boy
told the news to the newspaper men, and a few
minutes later it was being carried all over the
world. Other messenger boys, who had evidently been
in waiting, left the house just after the first one,
with messages bearing the sad tidings to relatives
and friends.
Within an hour after Mr. Gould died the callers
began to go to the door. Few of them were persons
who are generally known. Most of them were friends
of the sons and daughters of the dead man, who
simply left their cards and departed. A few,
probably not more than fifty during the entire day,
passed through the doors, these being either
intimate friends who entered to sympathize with the
family or those who went to perform the necessary
duties in a house of mourning.
At the hour of the day when the death occurred there
is always a procession of well-known business men
walking down Fifth Avenue to their places of
business. As they passed the Gould house yesterday
they learned the news and generally made some
comment. Chauncey M. Depew was one of those who
walked past. Approaching a group of newspapermen,
accompanied by his little boy, he asked if Mr. Gould
was dead. Answered in the affirmative, he walked
silently away.
Collis P. Huntington, also a railroad king, was
another who received the news first as he passed the
house on his way downtown. He went up the steps and
was admitted to the house. He staid only a minute or
two. As he came out he was asked what effect the
death of Mr. Gould would have on the stock market.
"None whatever," he answered. "Men are individuals.
Property does not die. Mr. Gould's property remains
just as it was before his death, and his son is
competent to take up the burden he has laid down."
Among the earlier callers were Vice-President
Galloway and General Manager Hain of the Manhattan
Elevated Railroad Company. Both had been at the
house in the morning before death had come, and
their first intimation of the end was when they
returned. Mr. Hain remained at the house most of the
day, receiving those who entered to offer sympathy,
and looking after matters generally.
The Rev. Dr. Paxton called about 10 o'clock and
spent nearly an hour with Miss Helen-Gould and Miss
Annie Gould and their brothers.
Edwin Gould left the house about 10 o'clock in a
carriage. He was driven to the undertaking
establishment of John Main, on West Forty-fourth
Street, and soon afterward returned to his father's
house.
The undertaker's wagon arrived at 10:30 o'clock. A
casket, covered with a brown shroud, was carried
into the house. Soon afterward the undertaker's
assistant came out and fastened to the door bell the
black crape.
During the day carriages continued to stop at the
mansion and at the house of Edwin Gould, 1 East
Forty-seventh Street. The Rev. Dr. Paxton called
again in the afternoon, and Chancelor McCracken was
among those admitted. The members of the family
were, however, entirely inaccessible to any except
their most intimate friends. Cards presented at the
house or at the houses of either of the sons, with a
view to seeing members of the family, met with the
answer that they could not be seen.
In the afternoon, when the usual parade of carriages
was moving up and down the avenue, there was quite a
jam in front of the Gould house. Ladies would order
their coachmen to stop and would peer inquisitively
out of their carriage windows. Pedestrians, too,
would linger on the corners for a few minutes to
look at the house and comment with each other.
As might have been expected, the "cranks" were on
hand. Whenever they began to air their ideas too
freely a policeman made them move on. One of these
cranks started to expound at length on the singular
coincidence that it was on the first Friday in
December, one year ago, that the bomb thrower
Norcross blew up Russell Sage's office, and that on
the first Friday of December Jay Gould had died.
The Rev. Dr. Paxton in speaking of Mr. Gould's last
hours, said: "He had been unconscious for a number
of hours, but as the end approached consciousness
returned. He opened his eyes and they wandered
around the room, where the family was gathered. He
clearly recognized them, and at his whispered
request they went to his bedside. To each of them in
turn he whispered a few words of farewell. Vitality
enough for this was vouchsafed him. When he had
spoken to the last one he became unconscious again,
and in a few minutes more he passed away."
It may be stated on the authority of one who has
been very close to the Gould family in their
domestic life that Mr. Gould had known for three
years past that he was a victim of a disease which
under the best of treatment would leave him only a
short span of life. Dr. Munn told Mr. Gould as long
ago as that that there were undoubted symptoms of
consumption in his case. He had then long been a
sufferer from dyspepsia and nervousness.
Mr. Gould would not believe his physician at first.
He declared that there was no consumption in his
family, and that what appeared to be symptoms of the
dread disease were merely the effects of a bronchial
affection. It would all pass away, he said, if he
took good care of himself. He then pledged Dr. Munn
to absolute secrecy, and that is why it never had
been announced officially that Mr. Gould was a
consumptive.
Mr. Gould was soon brought to a realizing sense of
his physician's correct diagnosis of the case. Still
he declared he would get over it. He dreaded the
thought that it might become a matter of public
comment that he was a consumptive.
When he saw that his struggle against the disease
was not availing, Mr. Gould told the members of his
family that Dr. Munn had long before told him that
he had consumption, and he had become satisfied that
such was the case. He cautioned them against letting
the fact become public. From that day on he began
more and more to make George, his eldest son, his
confidant in all business matters.
A little before 10 o'clock last night the Gould
house was closed, and no one either entered or left
the mansion after that time. The family had then
retired.
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