STRANGE SUICIDES OF RICH MEN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10902, 8 September 1897, Page 3

STRANGE SUICIDES OF RICH MEN.

The saioide of the master of many millions, Barney Baraato, emphasises (tb.3 Rocket says) the oft-noted fact that the excitement and nervous stress which financiers aud wealthy men generally are subjected to render them peculiarly prone to self-destruction. Although j financial worry and inability, sometimes of a.purely temporary character, to meet their , liabilities generally cause theso rash sets, there are numerous instances of millionaires and wealthy men committing suicide where other causes than those of a pecuniary nature must he sought for. When Abraham Goldsmid, the great bill broker, committed suicide on September 28, 1810, the British Government sctually Owed him, jointly with the firm of Baring, the sum of 14- millions, which he: believed was lost, owing to the continual fall of scrip due to the Napoleonic war. Had the unfortunate man resolutely held ou for another five years the eventual triumph of England would have'enabled his scrip to have been redeemed; and would have mace him, owing to the immense rise in the value of securities, three tim&B richer than before. The suicide of John Sadleir. M.P., oa the other hand, was due to the feir of the authorities discovering the frauds he had committed on the Tipperary Bmir; and bis dramatic exit from the world: by means of prussic acid, taken on Hsmpstead Heath on toe morning'of' February 16, 1856," caused a profound sensation in fcbts country. Anthony Ashley-Cooper,-eighth Earl of Sbaftesbury, who shot hiraselF in a cab in Regent street on April 13, 1886, was the possessor or vast, wealth free from liability, and the same may be said of the | Duke of Bedford, who committed suicide the following January. Fred Archer, the " demon jockey," whose sad end provoked bo much sympathy, although by no means a millionaire, ,was still a rich man earning a large income, arid absolutely clear of pecuniary liability. The most romantic suicide, however, of recent years, the full facts of whish have never been discovered, was that of the Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria on January 30,1889 This fceir to untold wealth as well as to the Austrian Crown, it is said, was passionately in love with a young Austrian lady, who reciprocated his affection, and seeing that his high birth proved an insurmountable obstac'.e to their un:OD, resolved, as they could not live together, to at least die together. Inspire of thefieiceiightwhichißSupposed to beat upon a throne the courS officials htve kept the identity of this lady, whose body wasfouad near the dead prince, secret, sava for rumours of a vagae aature.' .Time alone can tell whether the cause of. the Austrian Crown 'Prince's suicide will remain shrouded in \impenetrable myßtery, like the identity of "the " man with the iron mask." It would be easy to multiply these examples, all of which go to prove that wealth, though so much sought after, does not necessarily spell happiness.