A PRISONER'S SUICIDE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 217, 22 December 1910, Page 5

A PRISONER'S SUICIDE

HANGED HY A HAMMOCK CORD By Telegraph.—Presn Association. • Christchurch, Last Night. Peter John Lewis, aged 26, a prisoner in the Lyttelton gaol awaiting sentence on a charge of forgery, hanged himself yesterday with his hammock cord. Lewis' arrest interrupted his plan for an early marriage, and it is said that he spent his time in gaol brooding over his crime. Later. Overburdened with despondency at a charge of forgery preferred against him, Peter John Lewis, a single man, 26 years of age, committed suicide between noon and one o'clock yesterday in Lyttelton gaol in a most extraordinary and determined fashion. He was locked up at nooi? in his cell, and given his dinner, which he ate, but when the warder next went to his cell it was to find him dead. Lewis liad hung himself. In the man's cell was a hammock, attached by. a rope between two and three feet long to the wall. Lewis had unfastened the hammock, and made the rope fast to the hammock staple in the wall, and fastened the other end round his neck. Death was due to .strangulation, the rope being just sufficiently long to choke him. W'hen found, he was lying face downwards, his body touching the floor, but his head six inches from the ground. Lewis appeared at the Police Court on Friday, aid pleaded guilty to forging a Post Office Savings Bank withdrawal form for £2o,' and/ causing one George Patrick Madden to act on it as if it were genuine. He was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence, bail being allowed. Apparently bail was not forthcoming. Anyhow, Lewis had since been putting in his time at Lyttelton gaol, wherfi it is stated he was continually brooding over his crime—the first he had ever been charged with. Incidentally, it might be mentioned that the man's name he forged was a friend of his. He stole his friend's bank-book, and presented a withdrawal slip to the savings bank for £2O. An inquest was held today, and a verdict of suicide by hanging was returned.