HELEN CHAMBERS, SOME OTHER GIRLS AND "DAISY."
This is the story of Helen Chambers as told in a special dispatch from Kansas City, Missouri, to the Republican of Joliet, Illinois, and published in that newspaper August 5, 1909. Drink, drugs and debauchery hurried this winsome and respected girl to her coffin before nineteen years had passed over her head. She is one of thousands who perish similarly every year in this beautiful land of churches and colleges.
FIRST DRINK SENDS GIRL TO HER RUIN.
Died a Drug Fiend.
Kansas City, Mo., Aug. 5.—On last New Year's eve Helen Chambers, daughter of a respected family of Aurora, a girl not yet 18 years old and still a student in the high school, with a girl companion went to Chicago. There in a cafe Helen Chambers took her first drink. She took several drinks, and before the night was over was enjoying to the fullest the fascinations of a life that she had never known before.
After a lapse of several months Helen Chambers died at the general hospital this morning of a reaction following an operation. Her system had been too weakened by dissipation to recover from the shock. A mental and physical wreck, she had gone to the hospital in the vain hope of relief.
Lives Two Weeks on Absinthe.
Within seven months Helen Chambers, the simple Aurora girl crowded events into her life that would have been good measure for as many years. From the simple drinks that she indulged in on her first night, which marked the passing of the old year, she went in for the stronger ones. For two weeks prior to being taken to the general hospital she virtually lived on absinthe, and at the last she began using morphine. A message to her mother, still living in Aurora, received no response and the girl, with her life slowly ebbing out, dozed restlessly through weary and tortuous minutes until the end came.
"I was just quitting high school," she said yesterday, when asked to tell her story. "On New Year's eve I went to Chicago with another girl. We met two boys and went to a cafe, where the New Year's celebration was just starting. I didn't know what it was like, but I found out. Everything was in order, but I noticed that the girls seemed to drink as much as the men.
"Every one drank freely and soon it seemed as though every one was intoxicated. I took my first drink because every one seemed to be drinking and to be happy as well. The minutes passed quickly and my brain grew numb.