SAD INTERRUPTION TO A WEDDING CEREMONY.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 9992, 23 March 1898, Page 5

SAD INTERRUPTION TO A WEDDING CEREMONY.

MELBOURNE, March 16.

Yesterday, at Malvern, Mr Bertie Douglas, a young lad, by an act of inadvertence, allowed the saloon rifle which he was vising to' go off and lodge its bullet in his brain. By a strangely pathetic coincidence, yesterday was to have been his sister's wedding dayand it was not until the carriages with their white favours were at the house that the lad was missed from the wedding partyand found at last dying, dressed upon his bed, quite unconscious, and with a bullet wound in the centre of his forehead. A messenger was despatched to St. John's Church, Toorak, where the Rev. Walter Fellows was waiting in the presence of a large gathering of friends to celebrate the marriage, and when the clergyman announced to the expectant assemblage that in consequence of a sad accident the wedding would not take place the awed congregation silently dispersed. The youth was, by last reports, still unconscious, and in a most critical condition. He is the only Bon of Mr Charles H. Douglas, a well-known pastoralist, owning a station property in New South Wales. There are two daughters, and it was the elder of the two, Miss Irene Henrietta Douglas, whose marriage yesterday was so tragically interrupted. The bridegroom was Mr James K. Murphy, of Beaconsfield Parade, St. Kilda. The actual circumstances under which the accident occurred are surrounded with much uncertainty, and the movements of the unfortunate youth immediately prior to the time when he was discovered unconscious, are not definitely known. Strangely enough, it is not the first time that this wedding has been postponed owing to a domestic calamity, for by a painful coincidence the death of the youngest Miss Douglas, a little more than a year ago, cast a _loom over the family, and the elder Miss Douglas and Mr Murphy, to put off their union for twelve months, and now by a sinister fate the wedding has been again interrupted. Youug Mr Douglas was accustomed to the use of firearms from his boyhood, but it was noticed on more than one occasion by his friends that to _ certain extent familiarity had bred contempt, and tbat he was not so careful in the use of the rifle as considerations of safety demanded. From the position of the wound, it is possible that he was holding the rifle with the stock on the ground and the barrel muzzle uppermost, when the hammer fell and exploded the cartridge.