LETTER OF DEAD LOVER
“DEATH SWEETER THAN LIFE WITHOUT HER” “If anything should cause us I will kill both of us rather than be separated for one moment. I love her more than life itself. Death would be far sweeter than life without her.” Thus ran a passage from a letter written last July by a young soldier, Francis John Steirn, a sapper in the R.E., who shot himself with a revolver after shooting his sweetheart, Kathleen Violet Mitchell, at Dorchester. Evidence at the inquest showed that the couple were apparently perfectly happy arid were to have become engaged next Christmas. Steirn’s military character was very good, but his mother said he had suffered from malaria and pains in the head after serving in Egypt. Captain R. W. B. Perrott, R.E., said he lent Steirn the revolver to practise for a competition. Dr. Sumner said that at the hospital Steirn. when asked why he shot the girl, said, “She did something I did not like and we quarrelled.” The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder and suicide against Steirn.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SUNAK19271103.2.111
Bibliographic details
Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 192, 3 November 1927, Page 14
Word Count
180LETTER OF DEAD LOVER Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 192, 3 November 1927, Page 14
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