REMARKABLE SUICIDE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11622, 9 April 1901, Page 5

REMARKABLE SUICIDE.

• A BROTHER'S STRANGE DELUSIONS. On March 27 John Harrington, a labourer, aged 25 years, arrived in Melbourne from Ireland, in the R.M.s. Omrah. His brother, Patrick Harrington, who lives at Mount Noorat, in the Western district, came to Melbourne to meet him, and accompany him to Mount Noorat. The brothers had not met for 14 years. Patrick, who is about 35 years of age, had no difficulty in recognising John, but John appeared to have strange misgivings, which' he made very little effort to disguise, as to whether Patrick wan* really his brother who had left the Old Country in 1887, and come to Australia. When they had been together a little while Patrick was much grieved to find that his unfortunate brother was not right in his mind, and suffered from delusions not only as to their relationship, but on other points. They passed the night at a hotel in the cit-v. and on March 28 shifted to the Sydney Hotel, in William-street. The following day they rose early, and at a-quarter past six a.m. went to Spencer-street to catch the train for Glenormiston, en route to Mount Noorat. ' Patrick went to the ticket-box a.id purchased tickets, but when he had done so he found that his brother, who still expressed doubts as to Patrick being his brother, had disappeared. After a fruitless search, Patrick went to the Bourke-street police station, where he reported his brother as missing, and furnished the police with a description of him. From something the police had heard, they advised him to go to the morgue. He did so, and there recognised an awfully-mangled body as that of his brother, who had parted from him a little more than an hour and a-half previously. William Brown, a railway ganger, and several others noticed a young man leaning against a fence and looking down the railway line at the end of Rathdown-stveet, near the North Carlton railway station. When, the train from Preston came near he leaped over the fence and threw himself en the line in front of it. The driver saw him do this, and applied the brakes and stopped the train, but the locomotive and two carriages passed over him, cutting and crushing him horribly, and killing him on the spot. Constable Mahony, of East Brunswick, took the remains to the morgue, arriving there just in time to confirm the worst fears of the distressed brother.