A GIRL'S SUICIDE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22609, 28 June 1935, Page 9

A GIRL'S SUICIDE

SEQUEL TO FATHER'S REBUKE LONDON, May 28. Rebuked by her father for wearing shorts after a jubilee tea party, Sarah Isobel Heeney, aged 19, daughter of an unemployed miner, ran off and drowned herself in a river. This was revealed at the inquest at Newcastle-on-Tync, when the father, Robert Heeney, said that his daughter tried on some shorts in a friend's house. When she returned home he rebuked her for it. He said to the coroner: " I lost my head and gave her a tap and told her she must stop it. " J sent her to her room," he continued, " and that was the last. I saw of her." He added that he had had several disputes with the girl about the hour at which she was expected to arrive home at night. She was highly strung and sensitive, and had previously threatened to take her life. Ellen Chnk, one of the girl's f iends, said that she found Sarah crying. The girl ran to the river and on to a disused jetty. There she removed her coat. Miss Clark and a man called her to return- and they attempted to crawl along the piles of the jetty, but just as they reached her the girl jumped into the river and was drowned. The coroner found that the girl had committed suicide by drowning herself while of unsound mind. She had taken her father's rebuke too much to heart, he said.