SUICIDE AT WELLINGTON. Wellington, April 19.

Otago Witness, Issue 2199, 23 April 1896, Page 13

SUICIDE AT WELLINGTON. Wellington, April 19.

A labourer named Neili Johnsen, living at Alicstown, Lower Hutt, banged himself yesterday morning; He had been Respondent foe tome time. Deceased, who was aged 48, leaves three children, the eldest being 13 years of age. At the inquest nothing was addnced to show the cause of the suicide, dug accused was addicted to drink and had been despondent since his wife left him some three years and a-balf ago. The sight before he committed the deed he appeared (0 be in his usual health, and in the morning told the children he was going 'to work, But subsequently the body was found hanging bj a strap round his neck in a back shed. A verdict was returned .that he committed suicide while temporarily insane. Deceased's wife is said to have laft him owing to ill-treatment, and ia believed to be in the Pahiatua district.

The old stage coach London hostelry, the Elephant and Castle, was ia its time famous as a. public resort. - Its glories are now gone under the new conditions of life in London, and the Savoy, the Bristol, the Charing Gross, and other palatial hotels replete with luxury and comfort are very different from the White Lions, Red Bulls, and Criterion! of the early years of the pre* sent century. Leb as picture the bar parlour of the old Elephant and Castle, ray, after the battle of Waterloo, where the genius of the Duke »f Wellington overthrew, bj the aid of British bayonets and the Prussians under Blucher, the great conquerer Napoleon Bonaparte. Burly red-faced farmers from the midlands, the dapptr little keen wheat-buyer from Mark Lane, the wholesale carcase butcher, the dealer in hunters and roadsters and others of that ilk, all in harmony threshing ont the talk of the day over their mugs of ale, when in comes the old stage coaohman after a long journey. Not being gifted with much conversational powers aud with a consciousness of inferiority in this respect, he Ukes up the newspaper as an excuse for silence notwithstanding the difficulty that! he was unable to read. In thos« days the mail coach was pictured in an illustration, and the paper being held upside down, it is easy to understand the horror ot the old coachmau, who exclaimed, "Here's a big accident, a coach capsized," and the roar of the delighted company when they learned the nature of thac capsize. How different ia convivial life now to those old times. Instead of the long church* warden pipes we have the beautiful and fragrant Vanity Fair Cigarette, the perfection ot quality and the soother of worried humanity.

Mr Robert Crawford, late second officer ia the barque Helen Denny, has been eucstssfol in matins hia examination for flrit mate*