Casualties in Australia

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 105, 27 February 1890, Page 4

Casualties in Australia

} Melbottbne, February 12. Two peculiar suicides have, been committed at Mansfield and Myrtleford. At the former place a carpenter named Peter Hind was on Saturday evening found hanging to a rafter of his dwelling. The rafter over which the rope had been thrown was only about 7ft high, and as the rope wan over 2ft long the feet of deceased Would in the ordinary way have tested on the floor. To prevent this he hud placed a chair directly under the rafter and his right hand firmly grasping the chair back enabled him, by bending his legs at the knee, to raise his feet a few inches . frdni the floor, and in this position he was found. John Flemming, working on the Bright Railway, took his life at Myrtieford by putting a narrow saddle strap round his neck and securing it to one of the wires of a fence. He must have thrown himself forward, and when found the lower part of his body was resting on the ground, his face being suspended by the strap about four iuches from it. A young woman named Henrietta Al'Donough committed suicide in Mel-, bourne on Saturday night by swallow-- * ing a quautiiy of opium. Though, only twenty years of age, she was a member of the uufortumite class. On Saturday she was in a house in' Heffernan lane in company, with a woman named Clara Barnes and a man named Henry Bowles. According to their story, without making any remarks she poured some opium into a cup, and, having mixed it with vinegar, .drank it before they had time to pre/ent her. They took her to the Melbourne Hospital, where every remedy was tried, but without effect, and she died in the casualty room. The doctors at the hospital state that she must haye swallowed a very large -quantity, and they think that when the law is so strict in the case of registered chemists that some restriction should also be placed* upon the opium trade among the Chinese.