WANT AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2449, 10 January 1893, Page 4

WANT AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE.

An old man named Findlay, 78 years old, living by himself in a hut at Spreydon, near Christchurch, attempted to commit suicide onThursday night by cutting his throat with a razor.. The police were informed that he was lying iff in his hut. Constable Dillon went there and found him lying in an old horse-cover. He stated that he had applied for charitable aid on Thursday but was refused, and that on his way back he went into a paddock and cut his throat. He managed to reach his hut, and he lay there until found by the neighbours on Friday afternoon. A Christchurch telegram gives the following particulars of the affair : —“ Samuel Finlay, the old man who attempted suicide by cutting his throat on Thursday night, is expected to recover. He was given to drink, and was living alone in a wretched filthy hovel at Spreydown without furniture and only a pallet and quilt made of dirty sacking. The neighbours, most of whom are poor, often gave him meals. He was too feeble to work. He has children in various parts of the country but they are poor. He applied to the Chaitable Aid Board, but the facts placed before the committe did not reveal any appearance of urgent necessity, because the old man, it was stated, had come from Ashburton with £2 or £3, and though he had stated that he was penniless, his statement was doubted. It was known to the committee that he had a daughter in town to whom he could appeal to relieve actual starvation; that he had lived, or associated, with a woman who was herself a recipient of charitable aid, and that his family had refused to support him because of his associations with this woman. It was decided to write to his son at Ashburton,' asking him to contribute towards the old man’s support. A letter was accordingly written, and no further action was to be taken until a reply, which has not yet been received.”

The Lyttelton Times gives the following additional particulars of the case :—The story of Samuel Finlay, the old man who attempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat, on Thursday night, is a sad one, but one which, unfortunately, is not by any means unique. It is a tale of terrible destitution, caused by drunkenness. A representative of this journal, sent to make enquiries into the case, was told by residents in the neighbourhood in which Finlay lived, Day’s road, Spreydon, that he is a quiet, hard-working, inoffensive old fellow, though addicted to taking “ a drop too much.” He is very old, seventy-eight years of age, too feeble to do much work, and has for a considerable time been in failing health. At one time, it is said, he possessed a little property in Ireland, but sold it and came to Canterbury with his family—he had a wife and soma half-dozen children —about twenty years ago. He has since worked as an agricultural labourer, at Spreydon, West Melton, and elsewhere, and gained the reputation of an industrous man, always ready for a job, and diligent at it when he got it. It is about seven or eight years since he came to live in the cottage from which he was removed by the, police on Friday, and latterly, at all events, he has been in a state of pitiable poverty. His wife died about two months ago. The cottage belongs, it is said, to Finlay’s son-in-law, who had practically given it to the old couple for a home. It is about two months since the old man did any work. On the death of his wife Finlay went to Ashburton to live with a married son, and the furniture in the hovel was taken care of by 011 e of his daughters. At Christmas time i' e returned, saying that he did not wish to be 2 burden on his son, who had a large family aild was scarcely able to keep them. His neighbours certainly seem to have shown him a good deal of kindness. Most of them are poor people, but the poor old man seems to have had many a meal, “ shakedown,” and pipe of tobacco from them. Sometimes, too, he got, though not, it appears, from the neighbors, what was not so good for him—drink, and has come to his wretched hut helplessly intoxicated. One of his neighbors, Mr Hardy, who had shown him much kindness, suggested that he should apply for Charitable aid. Accordingly, on Tuesday last, the old man went to the office of the Board, and returned with the statement that he was to call again on Thursday. On Thursday he set out for town again, and about eight in the evening one of Mr Hardy’s sons mot him and noticed that his hands had blood on them. The boy spoke to him, but he did not reply. Mr Hardy, on being told this, remarked that probably the old man had fallen down and cut his hand. Next morning, however, Mr Hardy sent one of his children to see how Finlay was. The boy, looking in at the window of the hovel, saw him lying on his wretched bod, apparently asleep. Soon afterwards, about half-past ten o’clock, Mrs Huram, whose cottage is next door to Finlay’s, saw him lying with his face in a shallow water-hole outside the front fence. Thinking he was trying to drown himself she ran out, and he got up, and slowly crawled into his hut. Mr Hardy afterwards found the old fellow sitting down, shaking violently, and hardly able to speak. Telling Mrs Hardy to give an eye to him, Mr Hard rode to Christchurch to inform the police. Mrs Hardy with Mrs Humm took Finlay a cup of tea, and noticed blood on his clothes. On being asked what was the matter he raised his head, and showed

thorn the gash in his throat. He drank the tea, though with great difficulty, and in reply to Mrs Hardy’s horrified question as to why he did not come to her house instead of lying by himself, all night, he muttered something about “ being in such a mess.” He could only speak with difficulty, but was understood to say that the Charitable Aid Board would not do anything for him, and that he had cut his throat with a razor behind the fence of a paddock next to the show grounds. As the paddock in question is somewhat over two miles from his hut, it is wonderful that the old man, with the wound in his throat, managed to crawl thither. The truth of what he said was however proved by the finding of the razor in the paddock. Mrs Hardy and Mrs Humm did what they could for him, and about four o’clock Constables Dillon and Drake arrived with the police trap and took him to the Hospital. Here he received every attention, and inquiries made yesterday shewed that he was doing well, and that the wound is got so severe as to seriously endanger his life. A WRETCHED HOVEL. Samuel Finlay’s abode, which is in Day’s road, a lane off the Lincoln road, nearly opposite the Mount Magdala Asylum, is about as miserable a hovel as one could wish not to see. It was originally a weather-boarded two-roomed cottage, 24ft. (long by 12ft. wide, with shingled roof and plastered rooms. Now, however, the weather-boards are broken and shrunken, and one of them is torn clean out; the shingles are warped and splintered; the chimney is little better than a mass of battered bricks ; one of the windows has half-a-dozen panes knocked out, and the whole place is simply a squalid ruin. Some attempts have been made to patch walls and roof with sheets of iron and zinc, but these “ repairs ” have only the effect of making the wretched hut look, perhaps, more miserable than it would without them. “Not fit to shelter a dog,” would probably be the exclamation of anyone passing through the low doorway into the room in which the old man used to sleep. No humane man, however, would dream of housing his dog in such a wretched den, and no self-respecting dog would consent to lodge in such dirt and squalor. Miserable as is the outside of the hovel, the interior is worse. The light shining through many a chink in the walls and roof show what kind of shelter they afford against wind and rain. The flooring boards are resting on the ground, the plaster, peeled from the walls, lies thick on the floor, mingled with pieces of paper, also torn from the walls, dirty rags, pieces of old sacking, dirt, and rubbish. In one room lay some old sacks cut open, and lined with paper, apparently to hang on the wall for the purpose of keeping out the wind—one of them was dangling in the corner still. Of furniture utensils or food there was not a trace. Yet stay, there was a “bed ” a pallet of sacking, filled apparently with shavings —it was too dirty for close investigation. On this lay a kind of coverlet or quilt of old sacking and scrim. These two objects were the sole household goods of Samuel Finlay. Both were filthy to a degree, full of dust, dirt, and rubbish.

Some scraps of dirty paper were strewn upon them, and one of these was stained with blood. Other pieces of paper littered the floor, one in strange contrast with its surroundings—atom fashion plate of The Queen. There is about an eighth of an acre of land around the hovel, and there are signs that at one time the land was cultivated —a bed of carrots put in by the old man a few months ago has run to seed among a tangle of weeds and grass.