from The Worcester Daily Spy, 12 Apr 1883,
Suicide in Sothbridge

Frederick Whiting Botham, Esq., one of the oldest lawyers in this county, committed suicide yesterday, at his residence in Southbridge. He went into his cellar and shot himself in the mouth and died instantly. No cause is assigned for the act, except that he had of late showed signs of melancholy. His age was 72 years, and he leaves a wife and one son, his other son being drowned some two years since in Rochester, N.Y.

He was a native of Charlton, where he was born in 1811, and he was admitted to the bar in Worcester in 1833. He had been a special justice of the first district court of southern Worcester since its organization in 1871.

His original or family name was Bottom, from which he had it changed to Botham. His father, Frederick Whiting Bottom, senior, who died in Southbridge in 1855, was a graduate of Brown University in 1802, and studied law first with Hon. Tristam Burgess in Providence and afterwards with Hon. Pliny Merrick, senion, in Brookfield, and began the practice of law in Charlton, from which place he removed to what is now Southbridge in 1814, just before its incorporation into a town.

The son did not particularly excel as a legal practitioner, his civi8l cases being mostly in the line of debt collections, and it is understood he leaves a good property.