RIGHT TO DIE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 82, 4 October 1938, Page 17

RIGHT TO DIE

MURDER AND SUICIDE

A CHURCHMAN QUOTED

(By Air Mall, from "The Post's" London Representative.) LONDON, September 1. Before William James Bonnin, of Crossways, Gidea Park, Essex, shot his j wife and then himself last Saturday: night he addressed a note to Dr. j Beccle, the Coroner, in which he quoted from a speech by Canon Peter Green. Mr. Bonnin, who was a retired ] mining engineer, wrote: —"The finest! parson I ever met recently said in public: 'There is not a word in the Bible against self-slaughter. If you are going to call taking a person's life, at his request, murder, then you must call taking a person's property, with his consent, theft, which is absurd.' My dear wife has left me in no doubt as to what she'longs for. Some day those who have no longer , anything to give or get from the world j will be allowed to leave it less indecently." Miss Josephine Bonnin, a daughter, said that on Saturday night she and her two sisters went to a dance. "While she was there her father telephoned that they were to return. When she entered the house she saw. a note on the hallstand which said, "Prepare yourself for a great shock." She then discovered that her father and mother had beea shot. Mr. Bonnin further wrote: "My dear wife and I have been married for 28 years. A more unselfish, gentle, and lovable person I do not think it would be possible to find. For the past five years or more her mind has been failing, and for the last two or three years her consciousness of this has made her life increasingly unhappy." At the inquest at Romfard the jury returned a verdict that William James Bonnin, aged 69, murdered his wife, Amy Bertha Bonnin, 63 and then took his life while the balance of his mind was disturbed. The Coroner said that Mr. Bonnin took one passage in the letter from a newspaper report of a meeting of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. Canon Peter Green Sub-Dean of Manchester Cathedral, made the speech from which the extract was taken. In a comment since this tragedy, Canon Green said: "We would not approve any suicide except it were done under strictly legal condition*." ,