A DRAMATIC TRAGEDY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2552, 17 November 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

A DRAMATIC TRAGEDY.

A. shocking tragedy is reported by a Paris correspondent as haying just on-i-.urred at Nice. About two years ugo Dr. Courseron was obliged, on account of ill.health, to give up a good practice in Paris and remove with his wife and two children to the milder climate of Nice. Unluckily he did not prosper as he had done in the capital, and, in the hope of supplementing a reduced professional income, he had recourse to the gaming table. Fortune refused to smile on him, but he persisted. He sustained heavy losses, ran into debt, and finally found himself on the brink of ruin. His last hope was his wife's property, which that lady very naturally and prudently r«fused to hand over to him. Latterly "scenes" were frequent between tho couple, the lady obstinately declining to see her husband, make ducks and drakes of her money, as he had dono with his own. At last, about ten days ago, there was a violent quarrel. Dr. Courseron threatened his wife with his revolver, and in terror and despair she left tho house with their younger child, betaking herself to au hotel. Being unmolested, she was under the impression that her husband had gone to Paris with the other child, a boy of eight; but, becoming alarmed, she went to the house in company with several police-officials, and found her husband and child lying on the bed quite dead, suffocated with the fumes of charcoal. It was ascertained that the little hoy had first been lulled to sleep with injections of morphine, and that the father had then kindled the fatal fire, and laid himself by the child's sido to await his doom. This dramatic suicide has created quite a sensation not only at Nice but in Paris, where tho doctor had many friends.