SENSATIONAL SUICIDE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2279, 14 November 1891, Page 4

SENSATIONAL SUICIDE.

Melbourne, Nov. 4. A sensational suicide took place at Ballarat one day last week. About ten o’clock in the morning a well-known man named Henry Dockrell entered the shop of Mr McAlister, grocer, of Victoria Street, and asked a young man named Wm. Gray, who was in charge, if he could lend him a sharp knife for a minute. Gray unsuspectingly handed him one used for cutting bacon, &c., and Dockrell walked to the door and quickly, though deliberately, cut his throat, at one stroke severing the windpipe. Gray, seeing what was happening, jumped the counter and wrested the knife from Dockrell’s grasp, but the fatal injury had been already caused, for, though taken in a cart immediately to the Hospital, Dockrell was dead before reaching there. In his pocket was found a letter showing that the act was premeditated, in which he stated that he intended doing away with himself; and that he had drunk himself to death, and hoped that drink in every form would be abolished. The drink, he added, had been his infatuation and death, and boys and girls should never touch it or they would come to his end. He hoped his unfortunate creditors would let him down as light as possible. He dreaded being sent to a lunatic asylum for life. Dockrell, who was about thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age, at one time worked as a weaver at the Ballarat Woollen Mills, and was a good, steady young fellow. He, however became fond of boxing, and followed this pastime up until through it he got into bad company, and for two or three years travelled as a fighter in company with others. At the time of the celebrated Johnston trial and execution. Dockrell appeared first to give way in intellect, and was arrested on a charge of lunacy, but quickly recovered under medical treatment. At the time of the Heeney murder he offered himself up to the police as the self-accused murderer, but it was proved beyond doubt that he had no connection whatever with it.