OWN DEATH REHEARSED.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 10, 12 January 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

OWN DEATH REHEARSED.

WOMAN WHO SHOT HERSELF. A etrange story of how a woman "rehearsed" her suicide was told at an inquest at Brentwood (Essex) on Kathleen E. Barratt, aged 28, an inmate of the Brentwood Mental Hospital. Her father, a Walthamstow schoolmaster, said that his daughter had suffered from a nervous breakdown and hysteria, which he attributed to over study and the reading of spiritualistic literature. After she had returned home from a month's holiday at Hastings, he said, she was found in bed with a wound in her head and a revolver, a war relic belonging to her brother, by her side. She wae taken to Brentwood Mental Hospital, where ehe died from the wound. Dr. T. D. Power, assistant medical officer at that hospital, said that Miss Barratt described the whole incident to him. She said: "I rehearsed it the day before, and waited until a train went by to deaden the sound, and fired into the mattress. I would do it again if I got the chance, but would try a different method next time. I was fed up." In reply to the coroner, the doctor said Miss Barratt wae perfectly rational when she said this. A verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was returned.