Caspar Willem Reinhard Commelin Scholten died on Friday, 30 June 1893, exactly one week before the end of the academic year. According to the record of his death in Amsterdam's municipal archives, he was, ‘a Philosophiae Naturalis Candidatus [bachelor of natural philosophy] by occupation’, and lived in Amsterdam. He was twenty-five years old. Yet Amsterdam's archives reveal nothing about the cause of death, so that the inquiry moves to Apeldoorn, the city where he died.

In the card-index boxes of Apeldoorn's municipal archives, there is no mention of a ‘Commelin’, ‘Scholten’, or any combination of the two. In the microfiche death records, however, his name does appear. The record of Willie's death has been written in a flamboyant hand. Two witnesses had stated to the official of Apeldoorn's Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths that Willie had died ‘at 2 p.m…. in the home of Dr. Pierre François Spaink in this municipality’. Erica, the address-book and yearbook of the municipality of Apeldoorn, carries a listing in 1893 for ‘Spaink … physician, medical director of the sanatorium for the mentally ill, on Loolaan.’

In the annals of Erica, the name of Spaink, with this description, first occurs in 1892. According to the volume published in 1963, the last one in the archives, Bosrust private sanatorium for the mentally ill was located at Loolaan 59. Its medical director, Spaink, had moved to Utrecht with his family in 1909.

Apeldoorn's municipal archives contain a large collection of historical photographs and postcards. In one of the blue files with old photographic material is a postcard with a view of a magnificent villa: the caption tells us that this was Bosrust Sanatorium on Loolaan, Apeldoorn. The institution appears to be in the middle of a wood, but this is an illusion. Loolaan is an avenue lined with a wide row of trees. ‘Huize Boschrust’, to give the villa its old name, is set back at some distance from the Loolaan. It is a capacious building, with a circular tower beneath a pointed roof serving as watchtower. It has numerous large windows, including generous-sized, high, bay windows.