“MOST EXTRAORDINARY CASE”

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 196, 16 May 1936, Page 24

“MOST EXTRAORDINARY CASE”

Suicide of Near Centenarian

“This is the most extraordinary case of self-destruction I have ever met with,” declared the Wallasey coroner after investigating the suicide of a 95-year-old woman.

She was Miss Elizabeth Byford, of Wallasey, who was discovered hanged behind her bedroom door.

In her room was found the following note: “The strain is too great. I cannot go on. Forgive me for taking the best way out, not t<> trouble you and others witli my health.”

A niece f old Ibo coroner that Miss Byford was dependent on an allowance from a society. She had been well educated, but was loft rather badly off by her father, and afterward took up a position as a governess.

The coroner remarked that he had had cases of people taking their lives at a good age, but he had never had one as old as Miss Byford taking her life by such an act as this.

It was amazing that she had thought of the ingenious way of suspending the rope over the door, which she must then have locked, pushed the key under the door and then apparently stood on a chair.

In recent years she had not been living in circumstances as good as those to which she had been accustomed, and she did uot want her failing health to be a trouble to anyone.

He recorded a verdict of death from strangulation as a. result of her own act, there being no evidence to ohow the state of her mind.