For years, Elizabeth Bailey Hardee and Sarah Chamberlain Weed had followed remarkably similar paths. Both graduated from Wellesley College, became teachers, and eventually joined together to open an exclusive boarding school for young women in Boston.
But shortly after the Laurens School opened, Weed suffered a severe breakdown and was placed in a sanatorium.
Months later, she escaped and returned to the school, where her longtime friend tried to calm her and persuaded her to rest.
The following morning, the school’s matron entered Hardee’s bedroom and found both women dead.
Mad Teacher Kills Her Friend, Then Herself
BOSTON. — A murder and suicide occurred at the Laurens School, an exclusive finishing school for young women, when Elizabeth Bailey Hardee, a teacher of the school was shot and killed by a Miss Sarah Chamberlain Weed, a friend, who last night escaped rom a sanatorium in Newton. Miss Weed then committed suicide.
Miss Weed came from Philadelphia and Miss Hardee from East Savannah, Georgia. Each was about 35 years of age, and they had been intimate friends since their graduation from Wellesley College with Miss Hardee receiving her diploma in 1894, while Miss Weed received hers a year later.
Both had been teachers since their graduation, and last summer they decided to open a boarding school for girls on Audobon Road, in the Fenway.
On October 1, the day upon which the Laurens School, as they called it, was opened, Miss Weed broke down as a result of overwork and was taken to a sanatorium in West Newton, where she had since been under treatment for nervous prostration. While at the sanatorium, Miss Weed had been subject to severe attacks of melancholia.
Last night Miss Weed escaped from the sanatorium and made her way to the Laurens School. She behaved in a peculiar manner, according to the teachers, wandering aimlessly about the building and occasionally making some strange or incoherent remark.
Boston’s Fenway
At length, Miss Hardee persuaded Miss Weed to retire and the demented woman followed her to her own chamber on the third floor of the school.
When Mrs. Page, the matron of the school, went to Miss Hardee’s room this morning to awaken her, she was shocked to find both women dead in bed. Miss Hardee had been shot through the base of the brain while there was a bullet wound in Miss Weed’s right temple.
A revolver, with two chambers empty, was lying on Miss Weed’s breast.
Medical Examiner Stedman, after viewing the bodies, declared that Miss Weed had committed suicide after having killed Miss Hardee.
The pupils at the school, about 40 in number, are the daughters of wealthy parents from all sections of the country.
Source: The Star and Newark Advertiser. Newark, N.J. March 11, 1908.
