DEATH CALLED

NZ Truth, Issue 1181, 19 July 1928, Page 5

DEATH CALLED

Pathetic Story of Farm Tragedy (From "N.Z. Truth's" New Plymouth Rep.) Of all the mental stresses which ravage the human mind, disrupting that delicate tracery which maVikind has named "brain," there is scarcely* any influence which wreaks more havoc than the awful delirium of protracted insomnia. ITHE connecting strand between sanity A arid mental disorder may be so strained and attenuated by nights of continued sleeplessness, and the subtle outlets provided by . Death be so Inj sistently shown, that at last the weary human, tired of resistance, follows the beckoning finger . . . and the unhappy pall of tragedy descends upon an unsuspecting family. Poor Eleanor Surrey, the wife of a Huirangi settler, was tortured by sleeplessness and ill-health until one night, as she was preparing for bed, the insistent urge of death was too much for her weakened powers of resistance — and she drew herself afhd her daughter, Berys, across the dividing waters to another life. Mental Trouble At half -past one In the morning, Percy Surrey, the husband, was Btartled out of his sleep by a niuffled thud, accompanied by a suppressed scream, but when he rushed to the door of the bedroom m which his wife and daughter slept, he found the key turned m the lock. Entering by way of the window, he was confronted with the hideous spectacle of Berys and her.. mother, smothered m blood, their . faces contorted m death. Dr. Adamson said he thought that the mother had removed one of her stockings so that when she had shot her daughter,, her own life might be dispatched by depressing the trigger with the aid of her toes. The trigger pull was dangerously light. ■ ■ For two months she had been consulting Dr. D. E. Brown, of New Plymouth, because of high blood-pressure, insomnia and headaches, but although at first she responded to treatment, her last visit seemed to indicate that she was not making much progress. A complete rest, if not a change, was suggested. When he examined Mrs. Surrey, there was no evidence of mental trouble, however. Her bjood-pressure was exceedingly high, and this trouble would be aggravated by insomnia. The coroner recorded a verdict that Mrs. Surrey* met her death through' shock and haemorrhage, caused by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, during a state" of mental depression, and that her daughter died from a wound inflicted by her mother.