MAN SET ON FIRE

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 March 1930, Page 8

MAN SET ON FIRE

EXTRAORDINARY SUICIDE.

“I saw a man lying naked on the ground. His body was on fire. We put the flames out and asked him what he had done. He replied: ‘I have set myself on fire with paraffin. Hit me on the head, lads; put me out of misery.” This remarkable statement was made by John Johnson, of Edward Street, Hanley, at the inquest at Stoke-on-Trent on William Henry Pope (56), a labourer, of Peace Street, Hanley, who set fire to himself in the Hanley Cemetery and died later from his burns.

A verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was returned. Mr. Johnson told the coroner that he was in the road by the cemetery when he heard women screaming. He ran along with another man, named Bertie Emery, and asked two women what was the matter.

“They said there was a man on fire in the cemetery,” added Johnson, ‘so we jumped over the railings and saw Pope there.” They sent for the police ambulance and covered the injured man with an overcoat.

Emery stated that practically all Pope’s clothing was burned off, and hO appeared to be in terrible pain. A police constable said that Pope had apparently climbed the wall of the cemetery, gone into one of the buildings, taken off part of his clothing, poured a quantity of paraffin over the rest of his clothes and set fire to himself. i

On the way to the hospital in the police ambulance, the constable asked him why he had done such a foolish thing, and Pope replied: “I am in trouble and in poverty, and I wanted to die.”

Airs. Pope said her husband had been unwell and depressed for a. week before his death, and had been much upset by the fact that on the day before his death he was charged at the Hanley Police Court with breaking a shop window, when he was bound over. He was badly wounded in the head at Gallipoli, and had never been the same since.