FOUND SHOT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

FOUND SHOT.

ANXIETY LEADS TO SUICIDE. The 'tragedy of a general's devotion to his wife was revealed at a Chelsea inquest on Brigadier General Gerard Christian, who was found shot in the study of his house in Belgravia. Mrs. Ethel Haweis Christian, a relative, said that Brigadier General Christian's wife was lying seriously ill with a stroke. "He was devoted to her," she said, "and this illness preyed on his mind. He went away to Brighton for a period to recuperate, and I saw him on his return. He was in great distress on Tuesday, and said, 'I can't stand it. My head is going.' " Bertha Harmon, a parlourmaid at Brigadier General Christian's house, Baid that the brigadier seemed niore cheerful than usual just before the tragedy when he' took tea with his wife. "He sent me out for a taxicab after tea," she said, "and soon afterwards I heard a revolver shot." The Coroner: Does his wife know?— She knows that he is dead, but not the cause of death. Dr. Arnold Mortiz, of Melbury Court, Kensington, said that he had known the brigadier more than twenty years. He was all right up to the moment his wife fell ill, but afterwards he went "all to pieces." "We could not convince him that cases like his wife slowly recovered," said the doctor. "She is a comparatively young woman, only fifty-three. The general was convinced that she was going to be an invalid always." A verdict of suicide while temporarily insane was recorded.