SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A RICH SQUATTER.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 97, 11 April 1885, Page 5

SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A RICH SQUATTER.

An inquest was held last week at Mount Rowan, Victoria, upon the body of the lat Owen Chas. O'Reilly, squatter, recently of Wando Station, in the western district, the medical gentleman who attended him having refused to certify to the cause of his death. It appears that Mr O'Reilly (who was a widower, 75 years old when he died) had a grown-up family. He had amassed great wealth as a grazier, and had a magnificent estate of some 50,000 acres, on the Glenel? River, besides properties and estates in the Portland district. His only son, also named Owen O'Reilly, had a poverty-stricken little estate adjoining the old' man's property, where he lived, or rather subsisted, until a turn of fortune's wheel should bring better daye, or his father's decease should make him heir. In thp meantime strained relations were maintained between the two families, in consequence of the elder O'Reilly living with a Mrs Gorman, by whom he had a numerous family ; and to whom, by a will, he left the whole of his large fortune. The old gentleman, who, although 75 years of age, was until lately a most vigorous man, had suffered from an affection of the J bladder, and in view of his ailment taking ' an unfavourable turn, had doubtless seen a clergyman, probably, to "square up" for the next world. Father Marshall, a highly - respected Roman Catholic priest, attended him, and pointed out the injustice of leaving his legitimate son, with his large family, destitute.. The old man, having seen the error of his ways/ promised to mend matters by re-arranging his will. • But, as in the melodramas pf the good old transpontine school, he died suddenly meanwhile, and the inquest was held to see whether his death was natural, or whether he was unduly .hurried out of life. The inquest was adjourned pending the analysis of the stomach, as the doctors could not state whether poison had been taken owing to decomposition.