Harness - Will - insane - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Everybody here will remember Will Harness, who three years ago led the ball team of Wabash College to so many victories and no defeats. He was a phenomenal player and as a pitcher he was invincible among the college clubs. He taught school for a year or so after leaving college, but last fall he went to Ann Arbor, Mich. He was dissatisfied there, and had written friends here that he would return to Wabash next fall to take the course in English. While at Ann Arbor, he had become attached to the college baseball club which has achieved considerable renown this season in the east. While playing a game in Philadelphia, he was struck on the head by a ball and quite painfully hurt, mention of which was made in The Journal at the time. He began soon to exhibit a strange mental disorder and shortly thereafter became completely overbalanced mentally. He was removed for treatment to a private sanitarium at Indianapolis, and on Sunday created a mild sensation at that place in a manner thus described by the Indianapolis Journal: “W. J. Harness, an insane man, confined at Dr. Brown’s sanitarium, escaped from that institution yesterday morning and created a small panic by running bareheaded down Pennsylvania Street, with a piece of scantling about eighteen inches long in his hand, with which he was beating his forehead. Several citizens endeavored to capture him at the post office corner, but he eluded them, and ran on down Pennsylvania Street to the corner of Washington. At this point he attempted to throw himself under the wheels of a Virginia Avenue car, but the driver stopped the car just in time to prevent the wheels from running over him. Bystanders overpowered him and took him to the stationhouse, where he was cared for until the institution could be notified of his capture. Later in the day, he was taken in charge by Dr. Fletcher and taken to his sanitarium on North Alabama Street.”