SUICIDAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume II, Issue 26, 21 November 1879, Page 2

SUICIDAL.

It has often been remarked that at certain times, a sort of mania for suicide appears to set in amongst members of a community. People who believe in a theory of this kind aver, that the fact of one person taking his life, appears to develop any latent form of insanity which might impel another man to act in a similar manner, and hence it is that cases of suicide generally occur in groups. Whether such is the case or not, we are not prepared to say, but certain it is that a mania for suicide or murder appears to have set in at Wellington. On Monday last a young man named Taylor, a clerk in the Treasury, blew the upper part of his head off in his bathroom at that city ; and on Tuesday a boy was found hanging across some timber on the reclaimed laud with a heavy bag of sand tied to his neck on the other side. He was promptly taken down when discovered, and did not suffer any harm. And then the district — we might say the whole colony — heard with feelings of horror of the fearful crime that had been perpetrated at Wellington, on Wednesday morning. The thought of that father and mother lying weltering hi their blood in the house, murdered by their own son, and that same son shortly after hacking his life away within a few steps of where his parents lay in their death agony, is something too unutterably awful to contemplate. Whatever the motive — which to all present appearance will never be revealed till the Great Searcher of all hearts lays bare the secrets of the world — the event is without parallel in this colony, and was heard with feelings of horror by everyone. The family concerned in this tragedy is well known all over the Wellington Provincial District, Mr Millar's position as Manager of the Bank of New South Wales (which post he held for many years until recently) ©ringing him into contact with many people, by all of whom he was respected, although having a reserved and austere manner. A journalist, in the discharge of the duties of his profession", becomes to a certain extent hardened and callous to the finer feelings of humanity, but we think the most sensational writer of the American school could scarce report such an event as the above without a passing reference. Full particulars of this tragic affair will be found in another column.

[It will be seen by remarks which the New Zealand Tfmes makes on the occurrence, that the above theory has been suggested in Wellington in connection with the melancholy affair.]