Coroner's Inquest.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3386, 29 October 1879, Page 2

Coroner's Inquest.

An inquest on the body of D. V. Kent was held at the Governor Bowen Hotel at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon before Mr G. H". Brassey, Coroner, and the following Jury :—Messrs A. Porter (Foreman), P. Fergusson, James Gerrish, George Fisher, 11. Grinter, A. Boss, John Fletcher, F. Rodewald, John Graham, A. Petersen, John Leydon, and G. Hawkes. The jury hating been sworn in proceeded to view the body: On returning the following evidence was taken:™ Dr Kilgour, sworn, deposed -In consequence of a request from the Coroner, I proceeded to Curomandel street to view the body of the late Mr Kent. I found deceased lying in a house off the street on his back with the arms partially folded across his chest. The body was very stiff and limbs inflexible. The countenance was calm, betraying no appearance of pain or struggle. .Nothing around the body seemed to be disarranged so as to indicate that any struggle had taken place. On examining the chest I found a wound about an inch and a half to the right of the left nipple. Out of this wound a portion of clotted blood was hanging. Upon passing a probe into wound, I found that its direction was upwards and backwards, by which it is certain that the pericardium of the heart itself and the aorta were wounded. The passage made by the bullet, assuming the injury to have been committed by firearms, was very large, and from the distruction of tbe in terual part occasioned by it, death must have been instantaneous. I did not ascertain the precise spot in which the bullet was lodged, but the wound as explored by tbe probe, completely explains the c use of death. The woun<) had all i tbe appearance of a gun shot wound. j

In reply to quest ous by the jury, witness said. Ihe position in which the gun was found was its natural position. There was an iron bar on the ground, and it might be possible thut he was carrying the gun, and the trigger caught against the rod going off.

' The evidence^ of Matthew Cummings who found the body, James Goodwin, and Constable Baldwin having been taken, the Coroner briefly summoned up, and the jury returned the following Terdict— " That the deceased committed suicide on the 271h October, 1879, whilst laboring under a lit of temporary insanity, mid from the evidence adduced death was caused by a gun shot wound.'*