A SUICIDE'S SENSATIONS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 406, 28 September 1889, Page 3

A SUICIDE'S SENSATIONS.

Charles Phillips, a middle-aged gentleman of independent means, who led an ecce7itric and secluded life in lodgings at 3, Regina Road, Holloway, poisoned himself with laudanum, leaving behind him a written record of his sensations. In a letter addressed to Mrs Johnstone, his sister, he wrote :• — " 10.45. Took a dose. Writing this fifteen minutes after taking dose. Have been reading during the interval. I 'xm perfectly sensible, but a little drowsy. Longing tor the end. I Bavk JrsT Washed the Glass and put it at the back on the sideboard. Begin to fear it (the laudanum) musjb have lost its goodness. Have had it four or five years. 11.30. Just called old Solomon (his landlady). Nothing more than drowsiness still going on. Feel very anxious about its being a failure. 11.40. Mrs Randall 1 just finished the room and gone. 11.50. Just looked in the glass, and fancy I am changing colour a bit. Look rather green. Now it is over. It is an hour pince I took it. 12.10. The old woman has just been making a great noise for about four minutes just to let me know she is still at her work. She is a very bad specimen of human nature.' Finally the deceased wrote : — " The very boy's youth saved him, but what a mother to encourage him to pursue Such a Dangerous Game •' At the inquest last night no one was able to say what this meant, whether it related to an incident in the deceased's life. Upon an envelope, also addressed to his sister, the deceased wrote : ' You have the letter I sent you some time ago, you understand.' This, it was explained, referred to a letter he sent to her two or three years ago as to the whereabouts of his property. He was afraid of sudden death. The evidence showed that the deceased kept a lodging- house in Mayfair, from which he retired with a considerable fortune— £4,000 or £5,000—10 or 12 years ago. Since then he lived alone in lodgings, and in the manner of an eccentric recluse. He invested his money in stocks and shares, and was known by his relatives to have lost heavily during the last two or three years. A little while ago he told his sister that he suffered in his head, which was ' always hot ' on the top. - Mrs Sarah Randall, landlady, said the deceased was very eccentric and uncommunicative. She l could not get anything out of him.' He ocoupied himself mostly in reading newspapers and sketching. On Friday she was in and out of his rooms several times attending to his wants, but at six in the evening she found the doors locked on the inside, and becoming alarmed, she got her husband to enter through the front parlour window. Deceased was then found lying on a couch in an insensible condition. A doctor was fetched, and tried in vain to restore him. In his coat was found a three-ounce laudanum bottle and a fully-loaded six-chambered revolver. The medical evidence was to the effect that death ensued from laudanum poisoning, and a verdict of suicide whilst temporarily insane was returned.