SELF-GUILLOTINED.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 151, 14 October 1876, Page 3

SELF-GUILLOTINED.

The following account of an extraordinary suicide is furnished by the Chicago Tribune, of June 15 : James A. Moore, aged about thirty-five, living on a farm ntar the Farmer's Institute, about lifttcn miles south of this city, committed suicide at the Lahr House, in tliis city, last n'glit. He leaves a wife and three children. No cause is known for the deed. The manner in which it was accomplished is perhaps unparalelled in horrid ingenuity. He came to the Lahr House on Saturday, said he was perfecting an invention, and would visit his home on Monday, and prepaid his bill till that time. He called at the machine shop of Hardding and Sons, had a large new broadaxe and two bars of three-inch wide by one inch thick iron, sixteen inches long, which he had rivetted to the head of the axe. On either side fastened to these bars in the shape of a handle to an axe, he had a system of wooden bars eight feet long, the extreme end of which was fastened to a cross piece secured to the floor by hinges. The axe was raised, and held to its nearly perpendicular position by a double cord fastened to the wall. Between the cords stood a candle, arranged so that when tiie candle burned down to the cords, it would burn them off, and the axe fall. Where the axe would strike he placed a small box, open on one side, in which, when found, was his head with some cotton, which had been chloroformed. His chin was held up from his neck by a stick run across the box through the holes on either side, holding his, head firmly in position. He was strapped tightly to the floor with two straps, one around his legs, another about his arms and breast. The straps were both screwed to tue floor, rendering t impossible to move. It is supposed tint he set his axe, lit the candle, and strapped himself to the floor, put his head in the box with the chloroform cotton, aud was probably insensible when the axe fell. Tnc axe and fixings would weigh about fifty pounds, and would fall a distance of from ten to fifteen feet. His head was completely severed from the body, and the axe buried in the boards beneath.