WILLIAM L. SLOAN

21 October 1869

Suicide, gunshot

William Sloan was 40-years-old, a native of Ohio. He was working as a gambler in Tucson. He committed suicide with a pistol shot in the head. The inquest had two witnesses (no testimony survives).

“SUICIDE:- On Wednesday evening, Mr. Sloan, a gambler, and for some years past a resident of Tucson- committed suicide. During two weeks, immediately preceding the event, he had been suffering from attacks of intermittent fever, and upon the evening named was confined by sickness to his bed. In this condition he requested a young man present to bring the doctor to his room, and no sooner was he thus left alone than he seized his pistol and discharged its contents into his head. His friend, hearing the report of the pistol, returned immediately to the room where he found the victim already in the agonies of death, the bullet having entered above the right ear and penetrated the brain. Mr. Sloan, from some accident through life, became terribly deformed and was entirely disabled from engaging in any kind of heavy or active labor. It is supposed that his being poor and sick and helpless caused him to regard life as burdensome, and urged him to seek rather the uncertainty of eternity.”

Sources: Pima County, Arizona records 1864-1923, AZ 83, Box 2, 1869 demands folder, University of Arizona Special Collections; 1870 census, Mortality schedule, AZ Territory, Pima, Tucson, page 2, line 12.