PRISONER TAKES HIS LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1006, 22 December 1910, Page 7

PRISONER TAKES HIS LIFE.

IN LYTTELTOX GAOL,

tßy . Tclosraph.—p-css Association.! - n V "Chrtstchurch, D.ecehiber 21. : despondency "at "a . charge of forgery preferred against him, Peter .John. . Lewis, a single man, 26 years of age, - committed suicide benoon and one o'clock yesterday in Lyttclton Gaobin the i'> mostordinary and determined fashion. He was .locked, up at noon in his cell,'and given .his dinner, which he' ate"; 1 but when the warder next went to his.cell' ?■ wa s-to -find-him dead.- Lewis had ■hanged himself. In the cell there was fi. hsniiuoclt attached by a rope between two and three feet long to the wall; ind Lewis had' apparently unfastened the hammock, made the rope fast to the hammock staple in , the wall, and fastened the other end .round his neck, death being-due to strangulation. ' When found hevwas lying face'..-'downwards, his. body - touching the' floor,'-but '' his-. head six inches from the ground. Lewis appeared at the: Police Courton Friday,-.and pleaded guilty to forging a Post Office Savings Bank withdrawal form for £20, and, with causing one George Patrick Madden to act on , it- as -if.it were genuine. He was committed to. the Supreme Court for sentence, .bail being allowed. - Apparently the .bail was not forthcoming, as Lewis had since been putting in time at the . Lyttelton Gaol, where, it is stated, he was continually brooding over his crime —the .first, be had. ever, been charged with. Incidentally, it, might be mentioned, that the man whose name he forced, was-a friend of his. He stole •his ~friend's bank-book, and' presented a withdrawal slip to the Savings Bank for the sum' stated. "An inquest was held, to-day, when a i verdict .of .suicide by hanging was re.turned. -