HIS WIFE NAGGED HIM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 305, 26 December 1928, Page 11

HIS WIFE NAGGED HIM.

MAN'S ATTEMPTED SUICIDE.

WOMAN DIES FROM POISON. MEN QUESTIONED HER COOKLNG. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 13. Two extraordinary reasons were advanced in Australian Courts this week —one to explain why a man had attempted to commit suicide, and the other explaining why a young woman, employed as a station cook, took her own life. In the former case, John Charles McKenzie, of Glen Eira Road, Riponlea, Victoria, was concerned, and he was presented this week at the Criminal Court, charged with having attempted to commit suicide. Evidence showed that he was hanging from the bannister railing of his home when a boarder found him. At that stage McKenzie was almost dead, faint gurgles alone showing that any life was left.

"It was only a—well a kind of joke, v he explained hesitatingly to the judge and jury on his arraignment. "You see, judge," he went on, enlighten ingly, "my wife nags at me. Well, she nagged at me so consistently that I said to myself: 'This is the end. My life is a misery. I'll give her the fright of her life.'"

He explained further that it was not his first attempt to cure his wife's nagging; but that all previous attempts had proved futile and the nagging had continued. In fact, it got worse.

"So judge," he said plaintively, "I tried to hang myself just for a kind of lesson to her. A kind of a joke."

Each man on the jury panel looked sympathetic. Indeed, examination of the list later showed that every man jack of them was married himself. So it was not a great surprise when they returned in a few moments from considering their verdict. "Not guilty," said the foreman in a voice much louder than the one he uses at home. John Charles McKenzie was free. That is to say, he was free from the clutches of the law. But he left the Court with his wife, and it was noticed that he wasn't saying a word — his wife was doing all the talking. Broke Her Heart. In a case heard at the Rockhampton (Queensland) Coroner's Court it was shown in evidence that heart-broken when station hands complained of her cooking, Winifred Leach, an English migrant, poisoned, herself at Diamond Downs station. John Crowley, owner of the station, gave the evidence which told the story. Miss Leach, he said, had been known for a year as Mrs. Crowley, and had lived on the station as such since she arrived from England in 1927. "On the day of her death," he told the coroner, "the cook was away, and Miss Leach did the cooking for the men in consequence." The loaves of bread had not been palatable, and the result was that his overseer, Dasborough, would not eat either bread or dinner. Words followed, the woman and the overseer having a terrific quarrel. "Later," said Crowley, "I heard her calling out in a strange voice and though I struck a bottle from her hands, she had already taken the fatal draught. She died later at the Clermont Hospital." He said that she had appeared most agitated because her cooking had been in question. A Leper's Trial. Incidentally, the story of an extraordinary trial was brought back from Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, by Mr. Ray Sweetnam, of Perth. He attended the Selangor Assizes just before his boat sailed, and he described the trial of Kwang Pen, a leper, who was charged with the murder of another leper at an asylum. Several other lepers were called as witnesses. During the trial the Court floor, staircases and corridors were continually sprayed with disinfectant, while the witness box, witness bench and the floor and corridors over which the lepers passed, were all covered with paper, which was constantly being changed, the discarded paper being burnt. The Chief Justice, members of the Bar, pressmen and Court officials had sprays of disinfecting fluid which they used constantly throughout the trial. Accused was found guilty of culpable homie'de. I and sentenced to five years' gaol.