SUICIDE AT NEWTON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8664, 5 September 1891, Page 5

SUICIDE AT NEWTON.

AN ASSISTANT BAILIFF SHOOTS HIMSELF. It became known about six o'clock last evening that Edward Walsh, an assistant bailiff of the Resident Magistrate's Court, had shot himself at his residence in Newton Road, and the circumstance excited a good deal of surprise. Richard Walsh, who was about 50 years of age, has been for the last seven or eight years a bailiff of the Resident Magistrate s Court, having come here from Wellington. He lived by himself in a house in Newton Road at the corner of Regent-street, but he had actually commenced to remove to another house in Mount Eden Road, when he apparently terminated his own life. At about six o'clock last evening Evaline Cantell, aged 14, daughter of Mr. R. Cantell, who ; resides opposite the dwelling occupied by the deceased, heard two shots fired, and she ran in and told her father, and just about the same time Miss Rogers, who resides close by, came on the verandah. A curious circumstance is that prior to the shots beine heard about fifteen minutes before, a boy came to Mr. Roger's house and delivered a letter which he said Mr. Walsh had sent. It was addressed to Miss Rogers | and was written in pencil on a broken piece of paper. It said, " Will you kindly stop Annie from coming inside the house tonight, as her father will be a corpse when she arrives. (Signed) R. Walsh." The signature is somewhat broken, and there seemed to be an endeavour to get it into a cramped space on the scrap of paper. When the letter was delivered Miss Rogers showed it to her father, who, with Mr. Cantell, went across to the house occupied by Walsh, but they did not go in, and Cantell went to the police station and informed Sergeant Bernard. In the meantime, Ernest Slade got into the house and found Walsh lying on a sofa in the front room dead, with a bullet hole in his head. The wound was on the right side of the head over the temple, and a revolver lay on the floor near Walsh's feet. Sergeant Bernard and Constable Russell arrived soon after, and Constable Haslett, of Eden Terrace, •was also into attendance. On going into ' the sitting-room the police found Mr. Walsh lying on his left side, dead. His feet were on the floor, and there was a pool of blood under his head. There was a bullet j wound over his right temple, but the bullet had not come out, and a bull - dog revolver was on the floor near his feet. It had been loaded in three chambers, and two of them had been discharged, the second bullet boing traced through the window where it grazed the window sash in its passage. A messenger was sent for Dr. Girdler, who after an examination said that death was instantaneous.

The motive for the act of the deceased is not very easy to trace. He was in conversation with his brother, who keeps a store in Newton Road, in the morning, and appeared to be in excellent spirits, and at half-past three he was conversing with another brother, Thomas Walsh, and he then shook hands with him and said he was going away, but that was understood to refer to his removal to Eden Terrace. The deceased leaves five children. His wifo died some three or four months ago, and he has been somewhat distressed since, the children being for the most part in the orphanage at his charge, but one of his daughters, Annie, a girl about nine years of age, had arranged to meet him at halfpast five o'clock to assist in his removal, and there is no doubt that it was for the purpose of preventing his daughter from coming into the house and finding him dead that he sent the pencil note to Miss Rogers. None of deceased acquaintances, so far as wo can gather, had noticed anything strange in Mr. Walsh's conduct recently, but there is no doubt his domestic trouble weighed heavily on him.