DUNCAN CHILDREN

DROWN WITH NURSE

Little Girl and Boy of American Dancer Hurled with Automobile into River Seine.

CHAUFFEUR LEFT POWER ON

And Car, Running Wild, Carried Them to Death—Mother Terribly Stricken by Loss.

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES

PARIS. April 19, 1913.—A pathetic tragedy, which has cast gloom over all classes in Paris, took place in the suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine this afternoon, when the two beautiful children of Isadora Duncan, the American dancer, were, with their Scottish governess, carried by an automobile, running wild, into the Seine River and drowned.

Isadora Duncan, who had been spending the week resting at the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles, came to her town house this afternoon. Although a drizzling rain was falling, she decided to send her children and the governess back … in a hired automobile.

The car appeared in front of her villa in Neuilly at 3:30 o’clock. The children, dressed in white fur coats and gaiters, were conducted to the automobile by their mother, and, having been fondly kissed good-by by her, jumped merrily into the car.

The French chauffeur started off, the mother waving as the vehicle drew out of sight. It had not gone more than a hundred yards when the driver, coming out on the Boulevard Bourbon, which flanks the Seine, had to pull up to avoid collision with another car. The engine stopping, the chauffeur descended and turned the crank. Apparently, by an oversight, he had left the first speed gear on, and had no sooner started the engine than the powerful automobile shot across the road, the driver leaping swiftly aside and narrowly escaping being knocked over.

On the other side of the road there is no parapet separating the river from the road, only a gentle grass slope running from the sidewalk to the river’s edge. As the car sped down the bank shrieks from the two children and the nurse were followed by a loud splash as the automobile plunged into the river and sank in thirty feet of water.

Not a sign of the car appeared above the surface, and after a few seconds the eddying water became tranquil above the grave of the children and nurse.