James Harden-Hickey

Traveling to Tibet before his marriage, his crew made a stop in the South Atlantic. Harden-Hickey noticed that the tiny island of Trinidad in the South Atlantic Ocean had never been claimed by any country and was, legally, "res nullius". He claimed the island and proclaimed himself James I, Prince of Trinidad. He wanted an independent state with himself as military dictator, and later in 1893, he got just that. James Harden-Hickey had once written a book called Euthanasia: The Aesthetics of Suicide, showing that suicide was a powerful art form and "a privilege." He wrote that life wasn't so important or even worth living if one was to suffer, and stated clearly that "it is of greater moment to live well than to live long, and that often it is living well not to live long." Destitute and depressed, he lived up to his ideology by living and dying as a strong proponent of suicide: James I, Prince of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, took an overdose of morphine on February 9, 1898, in an El Paso, Texas hotel,[4] when he could not sell his Mexican ranch that he acquired while living with the Flaglers. Found among his effects were a suicide note to his wife and his memorabilia from his glory days with him, including his hand-made crown.

Area: Central / Downtown

Source: El Paso County Historical Society

Reference ID: 013-1983-195

Uploaded by: El Paso Museum of History