TRAGIC CAREER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13683, 26 February 1908, Page 9

TRAGIC CAREER.

THE STORY OF A NEW CHUM. A CHAIN OF MISFORTUNE. The story of Joseph Hulbert, who was found dead yesterday morning in the lavatory at the People's Palace with his throat cut and a razor beside him (says the Syd-, ney Morning Herald of the 13th inst.), reads like a romance, and a tragic one at that. Hulbert was a native of Manchester, in England. His parents were well to do. but he was of an adventurous nature. Home had no tastes for liim, and he set out to farm in Canada. How long he remained there is not known. He threw it up, and returned to England, settled for a. time as a designer in a cotton mill, and finally was attracted by the headlines of an English advertisement to apply to an agent who could tell him something of the fortunes awaiting men who chose to sail to New South Wales.

Others were doing the same, and six of them embarked at Liverpool on the Fede-ral-Houlder-Shirc steamer Suffolk on September 14 last, Apparently the facta they heard at home were true enough in their way, but not the setting which they imagined to thorn. One immigrant said they pictured themselves working for £1 a week, and earning H/heir way on to a little farm of their own on the English —much as they saw it photographed in the pamphlets they were given. They "had a fine, enjoyable trip out— the six of them—so they resolved to keep together if possible. After landing on November 5, and looking around the city for a day, they were sent by the Intelligence Department, as promised., to their work on a station at £1 a week and their keep. Four others who landed the day before in the Commonwealth went with them. AH day in the train they rattled to the back of noBeleringer, near vert ire. They were 14 hours on the way— miles— the cook, who had been in America told them about the snakes that were waiting for thorn— stories on which natives whom they met afterwards were not slow to improve. It was evening when they arrived. They were 'just imagining a comfortable lounge about the station buildings, when their belongings, with a few billies and pannikins, were packed on a cart, and the 10 new chums were sent seven miles into what to them was a wilderness to make the best of the Australian bush for their first night in. it. The first thing that hissed at them as the entered was a snake from the root of an old tree. The carter showed them how to pitch a tent. The cook luckily could cook, and there was plenty of wood. By midnight things were washed up; and, lying on the bare ground, crawled over by insects whose ratine and habits they did not understand, the men, who "had never slept out of a bed, sank into an uncomfortable sleep about three o'clock in the morning. The cook had them out and the breakfast ready about six o'clock. Then followed a day of work such as their lives had never known, clearing thick scrub with their eyes on imagined snakes, and the Australian sun reddening their backs and cheeks. No butter—o milk ; tea, when it came, a mixture of gum-leaves and water drawn from a small daw, discoloured and alive, 'An for the dinner, "Mutton, mutton, mutton!" one vi them explained. On the third day of this somewhat feverish existence Hulbert, the only man who could kill a shep, fell out with the ganger, threw up the work, and tramped through the bush with his mate to Orange. : The cook, being an English cook, and unabie to kill a sb»p, followed shortly with two of his mates. The restso far as they' know—are working on the scrub to this day. , . However, the five shouldered their swag. Humping their " bluey" in this case was a matter of donning a bowler hat, brushing their English clothes, and shouldering each a large portmanteau. On the way they met for tho first time the real article—three old men with their swag across their shoulders on a doubtful search for work. Hulbert and his mate, who had promised the former's people that he would keep an eve on their boy, and who stuck to him constantly through the trying weeks that followed, began a search for work, which, ( as they found it; a week here and a few i days there, was ever less suited to them, j a job as a roundabout at Go-alburn for 15s a . week, as an attendant at a city convent at j 12s, as boots" in a Pitt-stivet hotel, and j ultimately, some two weeks since, as general hand at one of the great public schools, j formed a chain of billets that lasted him for I a couple of months. j By this time he and his friend no longer found that work offered at the same estab- i lishments, and the latter was forced to ship I on a coasting boat. Hulbert was used to j visiting his remaining shipmates, the only ' friends he had in the country, at the People's Palace. In the course of the hist few days these moved elsewhere. Hulbert had told one of them some time since that he was tired of the life he had been leading. On Monday, his latent job having fallen through owing to his ignorance in the milking of cows, he engaged a room in the People's Palace. His friends were no longer there.

Yesterday morning hi* bed was undisturbed, and he was found in the lavatory with his throat cut. That destitution was not the immediate cause of his suicide was proved by his having the sum of 31s in one of his pockets.