SUICIDE AT PARNELL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8072, 13 October 1887, Page 4

SUICIDE AT PARNELL.

A WOMAN HANGS HEKSELF, A melancholy suicide occurred at Parnell yesterday, about noon, which caused a profound sensation throughout the district. The victim was Mrs. Louisa Osborne, wife of John Gordon Osborne, a clerk and bookkeeper, residing in Fox«street. The husband's version of the tad occurrence is that at about 11 o'clock he started from home for town, leaving his wife apparently in her customary good health and spirit!. He returned about half-past 12, and on entering the house by the back door, was horrified to see bis wife's body hanging by a rope from a rafter in the roof of the scullery. The body was perfectly motionless, and life seemed extinct, but on his grasping it and taking the pressure from the windpipe, he detected slight signs of life by a faint sort of wheezing sound proceeding from the throat. He endeavoured, by lifting the body, to disengage the rope from the hook in the beam to which it was affixed, but finding himself unable to do so called loudly for assistance. A neighbour, Mrs. Hunter, promptly came to his aid, and immediately out the fatal cord. Mrs. Osborne's body was then oarried into her room, and placed upon her bed, where Mrs. Hunter, after sending a message for a doctor, exerted herself for a considerable time to restore animation, but without success. Dr. Leger Eraon shortly after arrived, but on making an examination pronounced life to have been extinct for nearly an hour. The fatal act seems to have been executed with a considerable degree of premeditation by the victim, for from the surrounding circumstances it appears that she had made a noose in a piece of clothes line, which she attached to a hook in the rafter. To reach this, and put her head into the Blip noose, she wat obliged to stand upon a chair, which she then mast have kicked away from underneath her, as it was found overturned beneath where her body was discovered suspended. Mr. Osborne can assign no motive of any kind for his wife's self-destruotion. He states that they came to the colony about a couple of years ago, and his wife has been rather discontented and fretful ever since, presumably because he has had ill luck in procuring employment — having been out of work for the past nine months. They were, however, in comfortable circumstances, possessing private means. They had a family of five children, the eldest of whom was 17 yoara of age, and the youngest nine. Constable Hobson was early on the scene, making inquiries and arrangements for the holding of an inquest, which will most probably take place this afternoon at Tomlinson's Barrel Hotel.