Inquest on the Body.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1140, 6 September 1882, Page 2

Inquest on the Body.

[Coroner: M. Price, Esq., R.M.] The inquest was held this afternoon at Te Hapera, on the body of Mrs. Fanny Lewis, who committed suicide yesterday afternoon by hanging herself. The deceased was a married woman, of about 40 years of age, and was living with her husband in a house on the Hapera property, about a quarter of a mile from the residence of Mr W. L. Rees, in whose employ her husband was acting as a labourer. She seems to have been labouring under an unaccountable depression of spirits for some time. M. Price, Esq., was Coroner, and the jury were Messrs J. Cohen, James Quigley, Robert Skeet, Alfred Banks, Robert Thelwall, Joshua Rigley, Edwin Murray, Joseph Pickersgill, Alexander Allanach, Henry Turner, John Lucus, Robert Parkhouso, Janies Robert Scott, Harold Harris, and Adolphus Davies, who, having been duly sworn, elected Mr Robert Skeet as their foreman, and proceeded to view the body, after which they proceeded to view the scene of the suicide. The body presented a calm and peaceful face, the neck being deeply indented with the mark of the rope. The deceased had placed a small weoden case upon a chair, and after adjusting the rope around her neck and fastening it to a strong wonden beam above her, jumped off, and kicked the box from under her. Death must have been instantaneous and painless. Thomas John Lewis, a gardener, *T t sworn, identified the body as that of Fanny Lewis. They were married 12 years. She had always been healthy previous to her arrival in Gisborne, about four months ago, since when she had complained of a querelous depression of spirits. She had never borne any children. I last saw alive yesterday I’o’clock p.m., when she went down the paddock |with me on my way to Te Hapera. She seemed then to be quite lively, hurrying me on to my work. I left her collecting ti-tree for firewood. I returned home a little after 5 p.m. and found the door of my (house closed, and the door of the outhouse open. I went in and found my wife hanging. I had a tomahawk in my hand, and 1 cut the rope by which she was hanging, and removed it from her neck, and threw cold water on Jher face, and ran over to Mr Rees’s house to get assistance. She had evidently had a wooden case on a chair, and mounted thereon in order to fasten the rope in Ja double knot over the beam. She must have thrown the line over the beam, her feet could not have been very far from the floor. A man named Baldwin came from the Hapera at once, and I returned immediately opposite. I cannot say wiiether the body was cold when, I cut her down. My agitation caused me to quite forget. I never left Mr Rees’ garden from the time I went to work at 1 o’clock till I returned a little after 5 o’clock. Mr Rees’s garden where I was working is about half a mile from the scene of the suicide. Deceased bad been melancholy and low spirited for some time, and expressed herself to that effect to me, but she never said she would do away with herself. She often said there was nothing worth living for, but I never attributed any weight to such remarks and tried to chaff her out of it. We lived comfortably together as an affectionate couple, and she had no reason for complaint. There was nothing noticeable in her complaints, and no smyptoms of insanity, beyond her frequently saying that she wished she was dead. She was of decidedly temperate habits. She drank about half a tea-cupful of ale at dinner yesterday in my company when there was not the slightest indication of a suicidal intention. The rope she used was a clothes line which we had had for years. She was about 42 or 43 years of age. I believe I tied the knot in the cord produced, which was round her neck, myself when it was used for lashing up her box at Mr Ward’s. The time elapsing between my discovery of the body and my starting to Te Hapera for assistance could not have been more than three minutes. She was dead when I discovered her. By the Jury: My wife had been to town to buy goods and lodge money in the Post Office Savings Bank, which is recorded in the bank book produced. She told me of the transaction, and I found the book afterward. It was very seldom w» used beer, and I never knew it to have a depressing effect on her. [Further evidence was being taken when we went to press.]