SPOKE OF LOVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 25, 31 January 1933, Page 3

SPOKE OF LOVE.

WAITAKERE TRAGEDY.

INQUEST ON J. P. ALLEN

GIRL'S DRAMATIC STORY.

A coronial inquiry into the death of John Pringle Allen, aged 32, who died on the way to the Auckland Hospital on January 11, was made by Mr. I'. K. Hunt, S.M., this afternoon. Circumstances on the day of the tiagedj gested that Allen had taken poison. Annie Florence Goodall, agecl 10, said she lived with her parents at Waitakere. Her father, she said, was the foreman of the returned soldiers relict camp. She had known the dead man, John Pringle Allen, for about ten months. She got to know him through taking mail and messages to the camp. "I just knew him casually, as I knew all other men," said witness. "He was always called 'Curly.' I knew he was a married man. About three weeks before Christmas, on a Sunday morning, I walked over to the camp to get some meat for lunch. As we were walking along a path, deceased told me he loved me, and. had loved me for a long time. He said lie could get his divorce, and had good grounds for doing so. He asked me if I would keep company with him. I told him I was not fond enough of him for that, but he said I might get more fonder of him later on. 1 told him that I would not, and that there was no chance for him." Witness said that as a result of deceased's jealous behaviour at a dance on New Year's Eve, she decided she would have nothing to do with him. Talk of Poison. Witness said that on January 5 she met deceased, and he said he was going to get "booze up," but that if she would make it up with him he would not go. She refused to make it up. The same evening she met deceased as she was carrying home the milk, and he was drunk. He caught her by the throat and said: "I ought to do to you what I am going to do to myself." Asked what that was, he said: "I am going to take a dose of poison and get . out of it." On their arrival home her father put him to bed. (Proceeding.)