AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7080, 26 July 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

A GKNTLEsmr giving the n»mi of Mr. C. George Etbleston attended before. Mr. Flowers at Bow-street, the other day.and applied for a summons agauut the medical superintendent and. officials of a private asylum where he was confined in the year 1879. In the coarse of statement, he asserted that by scientific methods the most severo tortures might be inflicted, with as much suffering as was endured in former times when patients were chained to the ground and flogged. He complained that all the flood tasted intensely bitter, to much so that he could with difficulty touch anything, the eatables being heavily drugged. In addition to the loss of the natural fanctiens of his body, his throat began to close up. The third night he was overpowered by the fumes of chloroform, and he was removed to a room where the chimney had been blocked up and a fire lighted, and he was compelled to sleep in the suffooating atmosphere all night. He attributed this to desire oa the part of superintendent to cause his death by coughing. At the end of three days he was on the verge of insanity, and snffered from an internal 'complaint, and in a " week was nearly dead." At last the superintendent relented, and it was significant that the day before ho (the applicant) had a Bible placed near him with a mark at the passage, "He shall not die, but live." Duriog his convalescence, he complained that sulphurous fumes were passed into his room, and had 'caused him great agony. One night the watchman came to the door of his room, and said in a sepulchral voice, " Have you got the foot-blocks ready?'' But he dared not ask what fresh torture awaited him, as on a previous oc- I «.im he had been told that " dead men tell no tales." His principal food was pork, and he was informed that the object of this was •' to keep the lamp of life burning low." On one occasion he was sent to Eastbourne, and at his lodging noticed a coil of rope with a black silk necktie placed upon it. In the room, near a window about eight feet high, a large Iron staple had been driven in the wall, and covered with red to make it conspicuous. He immediately realised that it was to provoke bim to cotamit suicide, and if he had only touched the rope out of curiosity he would have been seized and detained for life. Mr. Flowers said that this was a matter beyond his juiadiction, and referred applicant to the .Lunacy Commiisioners.