A WOMAN’S AWFUL END.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1651, 21 October 1903, Page 20

A WOMAN’S AWFUL END.

BURNED HERSELF TO DEATH. A VICTIM OF GAMBLING. MELBOURNE, October B.—The eworni evidence taken by Mr Candler, City Coroner, at this Morgue yesterday, concerning the manner in which Laura Rahilly, a married woman, met her death, revealed a story that, if woven into a romance, would be regarded as an overstraining of imagination—she deliberately set fire to herself and perished. Mi’s Rahilly, who was aged 53, was $> J ewetss. a woman of highly emotional temperament, who lived in Young street, Fitzroy, with her husband, who is severely afflicted with consumption. The woman had contracted a mania for gambling by betting on horse racing, and for a long time had become so absorbed in this form of excitement that she practice allj' lived for nothing else. Every penny she had or could scrape together was wagered on the races, and when money, was scarce she pawned her jewellery, her clothes, her furniture, anything at all that she could raise cash upon was sacrificed to her craving for betting. When she won she became wildly excited, and her craze for gambling increased. Her winnings were staked and sometimes they returned to her augmented by further luck; but more often she lost. Then her despair was deep, and depressed! melancholy impelled her to put an end to her life. On one occasion when morbidly brooding over heir turf misfortunes she .swallowed the contents of a bottle of chlorodyne, but death did not come to her. On 25th nit. she told a cabman that she had lost all her money at the pony races, and asked him whether he “knew anything” for Moonee Valley races, to be run next la}-. She then said she was tired of life. Next thay in heir own home she was low spirited. Her husband lay ill in his bed, and to him she said she did not want to live an3 7 longer. In a sudden, access of frenzy she seized a bottle of methlated spirits, removed the cork and lying down upon a stretcher poured the contents over her head. She then struck a match and before the eyes of her horrified husband set a light to the volatile fluid with which she had saturated herself. In an instant she was blazing. Too late she repented of her act, for the agonising torture she was undergoing forced her to scream for help. The flames entered her mouth, and as she breathed the fire’ was drawn into her nostrils. Her hair blazed and her e.ves rendered sightless. She had made a torch of herself. The appalling sight acted upon her sick husband in such a way that lie. though so weak that he was ordinarily helpless, somehow found strength to get out of bed and extinguish the flames b\- wrapping clothing around the burning woman. Mrs Van-Allen, a neighbour, attracted, by the piercing screams hurried in, and found the wretched woman in a, terrible plight and ascertained the foregoing facts. Mrs Rahilly was removed to the Melbourne Hospital where everything possible was done to save her life, but she succumbed to her injuries 011 Monday evening. A verdict of suicide was returned, the Coroner giving it as his opinion that the deceased had been insane when she set fire to herself.