HEAD IN OVEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 661, 13 May 1929, Page 1

HEAD IN OVEN

MARRIED WOMAN S DEATH DEPRESSED BY ILLNESS Roused from sleep at 1 o’clock yesterday morning by a strong smell of gas, Mr. Alexander Emile Baker was attracted *to the kitchen, where he found his wife’s body lying on the floor beside the gas stove. At an inquest held this morning Mr. Baker gave his wife’s full name as Isabella Jane Baker. She had been despondent through illness and had threatened that she would end it all some day. On Saturday evening, witness said, he had retired about 8 o’clock, leaving his wife reading In the kitchen. When he was wakened in the small hours of the morning by the smell of escaping gas he found his wife to be dead, and called in his sister-in-law, who lived near by. Mary Bossett also recalled her sister's threats to commit suicide. On one occasion witness had found Mrs. Baker with a bottle of laudanum in her hand, when she had said that she was better out of the way. “I took he bottle away from her and told her not to be silly,” continued witness. “She often said that it would be an easy death to stick her head in the gas oven.” Witness mentioned that there was a pillow in the oven. The coroner, Mr. F. K. Hunt, returned a verdict of suicide. In accordance with the medical evidence the cause of death was said to be gas poisoning.