SUICIDE OF JOHN DE HAGA.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1313, 14 October 1872, Page 2

SUICIDE OF JOHN DE HAGA.

Mr John De Haga, the well-known basso singer, was lately attached to Xyster's Opera Company. Mr DeHaga came to Wiliamstown by the last train from Melbourne on Thursday night, and was accommodated with lodgings at the Steampacket Hotel, it being his intention, as he said, to transact his business on the following day. The next morning ha rose about half-past six o'clock., wjien ha complained of being unwell, and said ha would return to his rpom. and lie down again. About three hours afterwards ha entered the bar, and drank a nobbier of brandy, and about one o'clock he cams in

and had another. He then went upstairs, »nd in the course of a quarter of an hour the report of a pistol wns heard. On proceeding to his room the door was found to be bolted on the inside. The police forced the lock, and on entering the apartment the first object that met their eyes was the deceased sitting upon the floor quite dead, with his back resting against a box. The room was full of smoke, a large horse-pistol was lying olose to his right hand, and on the other side was a pool of blood. On examining the corpse, it was found that the deceased gentleman had shot himself through the head with an ounce bullet, which had forced itself 2in into the stone wall, and then dropped on to the floor. The ball had entered the head just over the right ear, and ; travelling in a slightly horizontal direction, had almost taken the skull off, the brain exuding from an opening large enough to admit a man's hand. The following particulars regarding Mr De Haga relate to a part of his eventful career. The deceased was a lieutenant under General Walker when he made his notorious fiilibustering expedition into Mexico, and, some time after its failure, he joined Lyster's opera troupe, with Squires and Escott, in San Francisco. While in California he speculated largely in mines, especially in cinnibar mines. He had been a great traveller, and was an "accomplished linguist. His musical acquirements were' also of a very high order, but latterly he lost his voice. Be is said to have been along with Susini, of the Lyster-cum-Cagli troupe, negotiating for the purchase of land whereon to establish an olive vineyard at Wangaratta, and a letter found m his possession after his death evidently refers to this. On Tuesday t last, while speaking to a friend in Collins street, he stated that this arrangement had fallen through, and he seemed Tery much dejected. During the same conversation he told this friend that he had been so reduced as to be compelled to accept an engagement to sing at a city concert-hall, and he felt the degradation so much that he would almost as soon put a pistol to his head. The statement was not made, however, in such a way as to lead any one to believe that he really contemplated such an act. Mr De Haga was an opium-eater, although not to a great extent. He had in his early days been

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nearly poisoned during the revelries of an Italian carnival, and was frequently attacked with Bevero internal pains, and he used opium to relieve them, and also to prevent them. It is said that during his visit up country - a .person came from California seeking for him with a desire to purchase his shares in a Oalifornian cinnabar mine for the sum of L 16,000, and that he returned to California in the idea that deceased had left Victoria.