HE DIDN’T LIKE DROWNING

Shannon News, 21 December 1926, Page 2

HE DIDN’T LIKE DROWNING

AND FOUND HANGING PAINFUL.

A young man, burdened with the artistic temperament and unable to find a suitable use for it, went to Kew the other night, and there, under cover of darkness, stripped and threw himself into the Thames with, the Intention of ending his life. Somehow he could not drown; also the water was a little colder than he expected; further, he did not quite like the taste of it. So he came ashore, dried himself very carefully with a large pockethandkerchief, and put oh his clothes again. Then another idea occured to him, for he found in one of his pockets a length of thin rope. He walked about all night, and when morning came he made his Way to Ken Wood and, selecting a tree, tied the rope to a sturdy branch and proceeded to hang himself. His attempt was succeeding, though slowly, when he found that the rope’s grip round his neck was too uncomfortable to be borne. Accordingly he loosened it, pulled himself up to the branch, discarded the noose, and — walked to the City and into the AntiSuicide Bureau of the Salvation Army. What happened there was told to a “Daily Mail'’ reporter by Brigadier Harry Gordon, of the headquarters of the Men’s Social Work, Middlesex Street, E.’ who said: — The young man was in a pitiable state of desperation, and all because he .was having to earn his living for a time by doing manual work instead of by teaching children to draw. He had gained an art teacher’s certificate, but had failed to obtain a post. His artistic temperament made him difficult to deal with, but I was able to make him take a more balanced view of things by telling him that many men with qualifications far superior to his were walking about London nearly starving. Brigadier Gordon too,k from a drawer in his desk a blood-staine'd razor. “This is a memento,” he remarked, "of a case in which the would-be suicide was a member of the Stock Exchange; he gave it to me after I had convinced him that it would be more to his credit to give up drink j and start afresh.”