SUICIDE AT WAIHI.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5077, 19 January 1927, Page 3

SUICIDE AT WAIHI.

YOUNG WOMAN’S ACT. SISTER’S DISTRESSING FiND. A painful sensation was created in Waihi last Friday morning when it became known that a young woman, Miss Viola Sylvia Mary Burke, aged 23 years', a daughter of Mr and Mrs P. T. (Nurse) Burke, old and wellknown residents of Waihi, had taken her life, by poison, self-administered. The unfortunate young woman 1-ft her mother’s house in Walmsley Road, shortly before 5 o’clock on Thursday afternoon, and at about 6.30 her sister Laura went to look 'for her, and not more than 20 yards from the front gate., on the opposite side of the road, she made the distressing discovery of the unconscious form of deceased lying in the shelter of the roadside undergrowth. Her experience as a trained nurse revealed at once that her sister was dying, and a few minutes later the 'feeble pulse, ceased to beat. The body was at once conveyed into the house to the griefstricken mother and medical aid was summoned by phone. Later Dr. J. M. Cole, who was quickly in attendance, notified the police, and Constable C. Watkins proceeded to the house of mourning to institute, the usual inquiries. On Friday morning an inquest was held before Mr W. M. Wallnutt, district coroner, Constable Watkins appearing for the police. Dr. J. McMurray Cole deposed that he had visited Nurse Burke's home in Walmsley Road at 6.30 on Thursday evening. He found deceased lying on. a bed in one of the bedrooms, deatlj having taken place five, or ten minutes previously. There were stains of lysol on the mouth and cheek. The cause of death was shock, following the taking of a corrosive poison—lysol. "TIRED OF LIFE.” Laura Burke, sister of deceased, said that her sister had been und°r medical attention off and on for the last seven years, and had, since, a child, been subject to epileptic fits. During the last eighteen months she had on more than one occasion threatened to take her life. When she (deceased) left the house at 4.45 p.m. she said she was going to do away with herself as she was tired of life.. She spoke petulantly, but, as she had often been in a similar mood, her words were not taken seriously. As she did not return, witness and her mother thought that possibly she had gone to her father at Mataura Beach, At about 6.30 she (witness) went to visit a neighbour to make inquiries, and on crossing the road, oppos’te her mother’s house she caught a glimpse of a dress in the scrub on the. roadside. Investigation revealed to her horror the still form of her sister lying on her side in a natural position. Deceased was unconscious, but life was not then extinct, as indicated by a feeble pulse. minute or two later the pulse stopped altogether and she, being a trained nurse, knew then her sister was dead. She then ran for assistance, and the body was ■conveyed into the hcuse by her relatives. Meanwhile Dr. Cole was summoned by ’phone. After the tragic discovery an almost empty bottle of lysol was found on the ground by the body. Subsequently witness, on going to .the bathroom, found missing what had been a nearly full bottle Of lysol. The coroner returned the folowing verdict: "That the deceased, Viola Sylvia Mary Burke, committed suicide at Waihi on January 13 by taking poison whilst of unsound mind and suffering from epilepsy.” Mr Wallnutt, in extending the sympathy of the Court to the family of deceased, he had known the Burkes intimately for a considerable number of years, and he recognised the great bereavement they had been called upon to suffer.