MAN’S TRAGIC END

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 84, 3 January 1930, Page 11

MAN’S TRAGIC END

STRANGE CASE OF SUICIDE TRAVELLER UNDER LADY’S BED TAKES POISON WHEN FOUND By Telegraph.—Press Association. Dauuevirkc, January 2. One family in Dannevirke has cause to remember the dawn of the New Year, for it was ushered in for them under very tragic circumstances. Harold James Hay, aged about 45, a commercial traveller iu the employ of H. F. Stevenson and Co., wholesale druggists, of Christchurch, committed suicide in the early hours of New Year’s Day by taking poison in unusual circumstances. Early on New Year’s Eve he had been a visitor to the house of Mr. 1. T. P. Cotter, a railway clerk, at 97 McPhee Street. A little after 9 o’clock Mr. and Mrs. Cotter, with a visitor from Wellington (Miss Stevens, a sister of Mrs. Cotter), left the bouse to spend the evening with some neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. A. Fussell, carefully locking all the doors and windows before going out. They left Hay at the front gate. He said that he was going to Marton, and they wished him a happy New Year. Mr. and Mrs. Cotter and her sister returned home abotit 3 o’clock on New Year s morning and retired to bed. Mrs. Cotter’s sister found Hay underneath the bed. . Hay later took out of his pocket a small bottle and drank its contents and fell across the bed. Mr. Cotter, being unaware that Hay had taken poison and believing him to be under the influence of liquor, pushed him out of the front door oil to the veranda, and the family then retired to bed. Some time later Mr. Cotter heard moans coming from the direction of the veranda, and on looking through a. window he saw the deceased lying very still. They examined the deceased and came to the conclusion that he was dead. They then telephoned for the police. A doctor was summoned and pronounced life extinct. Hay was the son of a retired postmaster who lives at Northcote, Auckland, and has a brother at Hastings. Evidence at Inquest The story of the tragedy was told today at the inquest on Harold James Hay. A clerk, Frances Eileen Stevens, spinster, residing at Coromandel Street, Wellington, said she knew deceased, having met him when working for the same firm in Wellington in 1925. Later she assisted him in her spare time in keeping his books. They were friendly, but had little differences about four months ago. Owing to something she had heard she desired to discontinue friendship, but deceased persisted in his endeavours to continue it. Deceased led her to believe he was a single man. He had previously threatened to commit suicide. About four months ago deceased went to the office in the city where she was working. He produced a tiny bottle marked poison, and drank the contents. He went away and rang up the office an hour later, and witness came to the conclusion that. he was bluffing. Witness saw him at the Danuevirke railway station on December 24, witness having come to the town to spend a holiday. Witness said she did not speak to deceased, who called at the house of her brother-in-law, Mr. Cotter, where she was stopping. On Christmas Eve she gave him to understand that she did not want his company. About 9 p.m. witness called at the house with a travelling rug for Mr. Cotter, and as the Cotters were going out for the evening, deceased accompanied them to a friend’s house, and then left.

After detailing the circumstances relating to her arrival home and the finding of Hay under her bed, witness said she told deceased that if he would leave quietly she would let him go. This he declined to do, and she called her sister, witness going into the kitchen. Hay was then asked to leave by Mrs. Cotter, but he went into Miss Stevens’s bedroom, sat on the bed, took a small bottle from his pocket, said he was ill, swallowed the contents, and lay over on the bed. Subsequently he was put outside by Mr. Cotter, who was unaware he had taken poison. Later he was found dei£d. Mr. Cotter said he was aware that deceased had an infatuation for Miss Stevens, also that Hay knew his advances were being resisted. He did not know that Hay was a married man with a wife and two children, separated from his wife. A verdict was returned that deceased died from taking a dose of poison.