LOVE AND SUICIDE.

Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 103, 29 October 1881, Page 4

LOVE AND SUICIDE.

A small butcher's shop, kept by a young man, nineteen years of e%e, named William Norris, in Stephen - Btaee't, Melbourne, was the scene of a melancholy occurrence recently. Norris, whose lather is also a butcher, carrying on business ia Queenstreet, not far fiom Bourke-street, was, a short time since, established in business in the ahop in Stephen-street by his father, and ¦waß a promising young man. Since he had been in Stephen-street he had conceived an affection for a young woman named Catherine Dolan, who resides with her brother-in-law, named Edwards, who carries on a small grocery at the corner of Little Lonsdale and Stephen-streeta— one. or two eheps from his shop— and it is the fact of this affection not beiDg reoiprocated that Jed to Norris poisoning himself on the occasion in question. Tue young | woman repudiates anything moie than an ordinary business acquaintance with him ; but he evidently believed that she returned his love, for wheu he discovered that she had been to a theatre ia oLher company he waa muoh put out. Ooe morning daring the present month a neighbour, who was ia the habit of rousing him, did so as usual, and he then referred to the inconstancy of his inamorata, whom, he said, he would murder if he got tbe opportunity. Ihe neighbour, on going into hia ahop a second time, saw him pat what was apparently a seidJitz powder in o a glass of water, and drink it off. Wnen asked what it was, he replied that that was his business. He then weut to an hotel opposite, and had a glass of ale, then to a chemist's shop a few doora further on. He waa informing the chemist that some poison he had bought from a hawker for rats (and whioh proved to be what he had taken himself) would not work quick enough, when the neighbour, who had began to suspect mischief, harried over and told the ohecnist not to sell him anything. Norri3 was thea prevailed upon to return to his shop, but h\d only crossed the road again when the po^Boa he had taken began to work. When he got iuto the shop, he again endeavoured to take hold of tbe glass out of wh.'oh he had diuuk the poison, bat while in the aot fell on the floor, lie continued ia great agony until bis father ariived fvom Queen-street, wheu he was conveyed to the Melbourne Hospital. Every effort was there made to save h<s life, but without avail, and he died aoon after hia admkaiou.