AS DEATH CAME ON

Mataura Ensign, 26 January 1912, Page 5

AS DEATH CAME ON

A SUICIDE'S LETTER. A letter supposed to have been written by a young man while the prussic acid lie had drunk was taking effect was read at an inquest at Lambeth last month. The victim was Edgar Belcher, 27 a veterinary surgeon, lately practising in Friar-street, Reading. His father stated that his son had suffered from religious mania. The letters left behind were hot in. his son's ordinary writing-

One of the letters, bearing the address of a firm of tailors in Park-street, Bristol, read as follows: To the Coroner and Jury,—Have had many attacks of suicidal insanity, but have survived them. This is the last. I have come here to dio out

of respect for the feelings of people in Reading. I have taken poison. . . I am dying; goodbye to all. My love and regard for my dear father and mother. A wasted life. Good-bye to

tlie world. I am a' broken-hearted waster. I am suffering from suicidal insanity. Many attacks have had survived, but the end of it is at hand. Edgar Belcher. The coroner said that from the shakiness of the writing he should say the latter part of the letter was written while the man was suffering from the effects of poison.

lii another letter addressed to Dr Porter, of Mile End-road, Belcher wrote: "May I call on your kindness to perform the last rites on my body? My regret for a wasted life, and my parents and soul." „ Mr Herbert Dunn, a veterh>;,ry surgeon, of Friar-sotreet, Reading, said that Belcher had been his colleague for nineteen months. He was a brilliant veterinary surgeon. A night ported at the Waterloo Hotel, York-road, S.E., stated that at 1 a.m. on the Sunday proceeding his death Belcher drove up in a cab and asked for change for a sovereign. He paid the cabman and bade him goodnight, afterwards producing his receipt for a room, which he had previously engaged. Twenty minutes after the porter heard a loud pumping noise, and, finding the door unlocked, he entered and saw Belcher on the floor. He died in five minutes.

The porter added that close to a bottle labelled prussic acid" lay the top of a fountain pen. Dr Freyberger said death was due to suffocation from prussic acid poisoning, and the dose must have been a large one.