WRECKED BY OPIUM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11771, 28 September 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

WRECKED BY OPIUM.

WELSH MOTHER GAVE THE DRUG TO HER INFANTS. A remarkable story of opium -eating conies from Llangollen, North Wales. Edward Jones, 20, attired in the uniform of the Ruabon Volunteers, was pulled off the parapet of the Llangollen Bridge, which he had mounted with the intention of throwing himself into the River Dee. His eyes were fixed and glassy, and he did not appear responsible for his actions. When the policeman took hold of him he fell in a fit on the pavement, and had to be carried to the police cells on an arrbulance. There a medical man found that the would-be suicide was suffering from the effects of opium-eating. When brought before the magistrates on a charge of attempted suicide he was sobbing and shivering through enforced abstinence, and said he would never try to take his life again. He added that he had taken opium since he was a child. His mother, in supporting this extraordinary statement, said she had given her boys' " what you call opium" since they were babies. It was ordered for convulsions by the doctor, and the boys got to like it so much that they continued taking it when they grew up. Indeed, she had bought a supply for her son Edward that morning, but it had been impounded by the police. The chairman of the Bench wanted to know whether opium-eat-ing would have similar effects to imbibing alcohol, and he was told by ? medical witness that, opium was 10 times as bad as alcohol. Thereupon the mother exclaimed, " Oh* dear, he only wants such a little bit for two days The magistrates bound the man over in his own sureties to keep the , peace far, 12 months..