SUICIDE PACT

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 13, 15 July 1936, Page 11

SUICIDE PACT

CURATE AND WIFE

THE EXCOMMUNICATION CASE

SON'S EVIDENCE

onlted Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, July 14. At the inquest into the circumstances of the death of William Henry Boyne Bunting, father of the filmwriter, James Bunting, who has been excommunicated by the Bishop of Chichester, it was disclosed that he was 70 years of age and curate of Camelsdale, Surrey. He had previously held various rectorships in England. His wife was 56. They formed a suicide pact on July 5. When Bunting did not arrive to conduct Sunday services a policeman climbed in his window and found them dead in separate beds. A letter lying on a table said: "The money promised today did not arrive. Our son has had the bulk of our money."

The son gave evidence that he had had a good deal of his parents' money, but not the bulk of it. His father rang him up and asked him for £300. He seemed exceptionally worried owing to an accumulation of things. Today he said his father was of a very forgiving nature and would have condemned the bishop's letter of excommunication. "I intend to pay his creditors, devoting to this everything over £100 which I earn," he said. WIDESPREAD DISCUSSION. The excommunication is being widely discussed. The Archbishop of Canterbury's secretary says: "We are taking no action in the Canterbury diocese." The Bishops of Manchester and Barrow support the excommunication. The Bishop of Chichester told the "Daily Herald" that the action he had taken was a pastoral duty imposed upon the Bishop and based on the rubric at the beginning of the order of Holy Communion in the Prayer Book. Excommunication was not as rare as might be imagined, but was always treated as a private matter between the Church and the member concerned. The public disclosure in this case would not have been made if Bunting had not published the letter. BAPTISM CEKEMONY. Bunting says: "A son born on the day of the inquest into the death of my parents on July 8 will be named Christopher Boyne, after his grandfather, who was born near the Boyne River, Queensland. The vicar of Fer-ring-on-Sea, where I am living, has consented to baptise the baby at the parish church, on which there is no ban, although it is in the Chichester diocese." Bunting's wife,, formerly the actress Mary Barlow, appeared in some of Mr. C. B. Cochran's productions.

It was reported yesterday that as a result of a jury's rider censuring James Bunting for callousness in not helping his parents, the Rev. Henry Bunting and Mrs. Bunting, in their desperate financial straits, culminating in their suicide together, the Bishop of Chichester had excommunicated him N The Bishop, in a letter to Bunting, said: "The rider appears to be fully justified. In view of the grave wrong you have done your neighbours and the Church, which demands great repentance, I forbid yo'u Holy Communion."