A Suicide’s Prayer.

Evening Star, Issue 7233, 8 June 1887, Page 3

A Suicide’s Prayer.

An inquiry was held recently at the Canterbury Arms, Newington, relative to the death of William Sterling Jackson, a colonial soapmaker, aged iifty-one, lately residing in Beresford street, Walworth* The case presented some peculiarly sad features. Seven years ago he started business as a soapmaker at the Cape of Good Hope, and returning to England in August last with the money he had made, lost a considerable amount of it in experiments, and, failing to obtain any other employment, bad been mainly dependent for support upon his sisters, with whom he lived, being a bachelor, _ and latterly they had all fared so b'adly that they had sometimes been short of food. On the evening of the suicide he went into his sister’s bedroom, and, seeming very excited about money matters, took a little bottle out of a black bag, and put it into a breast pocket, and a short time afterwards was found lying on the floor of his own room, frothing at the mouth, and died in twenty minutes from the effects of a strong dose of cyanide of potassium. By his side was found a written paper, which ran as follows:—“ Almighty Father, Thou who knowest the privations they have undured, help, I implore Thee, help my unfortunate sisters. Alleviate their sufferings and console them in their distress, I humbly pray Thee to deal mercifully with me, a miserable despairing suicide. Jesus, receive my soul.” The jury unanimously returned a verdict of “Suicide while of unsound mind.”