SUICIDE COMPACT FULFILLED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1014, 24 October 1912, Page 4

SUICIDE COMPACT FULFILLED.

FOURTH ATTEMPT PROVES SUCCESSFUL.

A remarkable suicide compact was disclosed recently at the inquest held at Gillingham on Mrs Florence Elizabeth Edwards and Walter Darlow, a corporal of the Royal Marines, who had lived together for fourteen months at Gad’s Hill. Mrs Edwards, who was the wife of a naval stoker now on the China station, was found poisoned in their house, while Darlow was discovered decapitated on the railway line between Gillingham and Raiuham.

Police-sergeant Baron stated that the woman was lying dead in bed when he entered the house.

“Two cups were on the table,” he added, “one with the words ‘Remember me,’ and the other inscribed ‘Dove the giver.’ There was oxalic acid in one cup. A small blood-stained pocket knife and a large knife were also lying on the table. On the raantlepiece I found several letters. “There was a small cut on the man’s wrist.”

The Coroner told the jury that he need not read to them the whole of the contents of the letters. In one of them Darlow set forth how he wished bis personal goods distributed, and in a letter addressed to his brother he wrote :

“Don’t let any of them think I was out of my mind. lam doing it of my own free will, and Florrie is doing it of her free will. “She will not live without me, and I will not live without her. Death is better. I told you I would pack up, and this is what I meant.” Another letter was written at 2.25 a.m. In this Darlow staled : “We both drank poison at eleven o’clock. It killed Florrie and leit me alive at twelve o’clock midnight. So I took another lot and lost my senses for two hours. “I woke up at two o’clock, and tried to cut mj wrist to bleed to death. Finding I cannot make it bleed enough, I am going to put mj self under a train near Twydale lane.”

The jury returned a verdict of “suicide during temporary insanity” in both cases.