INQUEST.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2157, 24 January 1881, Page 3

INQUEST.

A Chinaman named Quong Yom, undergoing a sentence of ten years' penal servitude for rape, committed suicide on Friday night in her Maiesty's prisoD, Lyttelton. An inquest was held on Saturday afternoon on the body, when the following evidence was adduced, Major Lean being the Coroner and Mr Thomas Wright foreman of tho jury : Samuel O. Phillips, • gaoler, produoed the warrant under which ho held the deceased for

ton years' penal servitude. The deceased's conduot had been very violent after he had done the first three months. Ho had been reported to the visiting justice on the 19th inst. for refusing to work, and he was then given forty-eight hours to consider whether he would work or not. At the expiration of the time deceased still refused, and witness ordered him twelve lashes. These would have been given him on Monday. On Friday night the man was reported to have hanged himself. The medical officer was sent for immediately. The punishments whioh can bo inflicted in prison are bread and water, irons, and solitary confinement. The prisoners are locked up at 6 p.m. during the summer season, and Buch as are considered especially dangerous are inspocted at intervals during each night. The deceased had attempted suicide on 2nd April, 1878, the night after his conviction. Ho hed left on that occasion some words of consolation to one or two of | his countrymen.

_ S. O. Adams, the warder on duty at the time of deceased's death, said he last saw Quong Yam at 9 p.m., and at midnight, looking through the trap in the door, he saw him hanging up against the wall, opposite to the door. Before this he had been instructed by the ohief warder to visit the cell occupied by the deceased occasionally, or, as he supposed, about four times during the night. James Arnold, chief warder, said he was awoke by the alarm-bell and upon being informed of the deceased's aot he proceeded to the cell, and found the prisoner hanging by the neck by a rope fastened on the window bar. Upon looking at the hammock in the cell he found the deed had been consummated by using one of the oords belonging to it. The gaoler was present within a minute or so after, and also the doctor. A tin knife (produced) ia probably the instrument deceased used in extracting the rope from the canvas. It is the regulation knife allowed to prisoners. The rope was not merely run in the hem of the hammock, but it was stretched at intervals along the hem on the edge of the hammock.

J. H. Worgan, senior principal warder, testified to having inspected the deceased at 6 p.m. on Friday. J. T. Bouse, gaol surgeon, said that at 12.17 a.m. on Saturday he was called to attend deceased. The gaoler and chief warder went with him to the cell. Deceased was then lying upon his bed, with a pieoe of cord round hia neck. His faoe was livid; the extremities were nearly oold. From the appearance of the body death had taken place fully two hours before. He had known the deceased since his incarceration in the prison, and never saw anything that would lead him to think deceased was of unsound mind. A verdiot of Telo de te was returned. Quong Yam was about thirty-eight yesra of age, a native of Canton. He was a hawker at the time of his arrest at Christohuroh on the 26th of February, 1878, for the rape of a girl under fourteen years old, and on the Ist of April he was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude and fifty laabes. The floggings had been given, twenty-five lashes each time. He had on a former occasion attempted to hang himself.