VERDICT OF SUICIDE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 79, 3 April 1928, Page 11

VERDICT OF SUICIDE.

TE PAPAPA FATALITY. "That she committed suicide by poisoning herself with gas while in a depressed State of mind," was the verdict returned yesterday 'by Mr. D. A. Sutherland, who conducted an inquest on the death of Mrs. £ather Dorothy Halverston, of Felix Street, Te Papapa.

Louis Benjamin Halverston, husband of deceased, said his wife complained of a headache on Friday night, when he last saw her alive, but she did not take anything to relieve the pain. She had previously expressed a fear that she might become a victim of dropsy. If she had it she would end everything, she said. In addition to this fear she was depressed about the loss of their daughter, who died last September. Mrs. Halverston underwent an operation for internal trouble as recently as last February in the public hospital, where she was a patient for three weeks. He produced a book containing some of his wife's writing and the name of their daughter which had been inscribed therein after he retired on Friday night. When he found his wife lying on the kitchen floor between 4. and 5 a.m. on Saturday there were three cuAions under her shoulders and her head was in the oven of the ijas stove and the gas was turned on. She was quite dead. Constable F. W. . T ohnsen, who with Constable Hinton removed the body froro the floor on to a bed, thought Mrs. Halverston had been dead about four hours.

Mrs. Esther Hewitt, a neighbour, said she had known the deceased for abo tit a month, and ha'* nlwavs found her in a normal sta+e of miri'l when conversing with her, which fhe did da.ilv. Witu°s« •'ad the im T,r fs°ion that Mr. and Mrs. Halverston lived hamrlv together anri was j»reatl T * surprised when he told her that his wife was dead.