ON INQUESTS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 31, 13 March 1914, Page 6

ON INQUESTS.

SOME NOTES AND QUAINT QUERIES. [Specially written for The Sun.] Dear Jack, —I am getting out. You . know what that means. I feel both mentally and physically unable to »ope with the new scheme of life at 54. After all my previous worries, and griefs, this strike affair has finished me. . . . ' : Good-bye, old man, you have been a good friend.—Yours as ever, . ALFRED J. STEPHENS. This is almost the text of a letter left by a suicide in Wellington last week — a letter, which on analysis, only appeals to me as one emanating from an eminently logical mind; and the fine simplicity and directness of the message, the writer's remembrance of one who had always been a good friend to him, and his frank admission that the daily turmoil on the waterfront was too much for him at 54, all fairly ring with sanity, yet in accordance with a custom that is neither honoured in the observance not believed in, Alfred Stephens was declared to have taken his life whilst in a state of temporary insanity. Is it not f time that another set of words was supplied to coroners' to meet such cases? Though that official might bring in that verdict or exercise his prerogative, and instruct the jury to do so, he no more bebeves it than .does-the doctor who testifies that ho found life to be. extinct, or the police sergeant, who asks with terrific seriousness on which side the body was'lying, or the tired reporter in the background, who writes it all down that the world may know—what? That the man suicided? and something more. Something that is a stigma on the blood for ever and for ever —that he died —mad! AN UNJUST PRESUMPTION. I do not know,' and seemingly the authorities do not care, if Alfred Stephens had any children —relatives. But the question viewed in the braodest light, is whether the coroner has any moral right (he seems to have, a legal one) to smirch the progeny of a man who. suicides, without having mo're evidence than is adduced from the mere discovery of the dead body and a plain straightforward letter, avowing his intion of putting an end to a hopeless struggle. The quaint custom has grown up with the country of setting up the pretty theory that, in the sacred name of decency, and to keep up the pretence that life is worth living to everyone, a man or woman, must necessarily be insane who takes his or hef life, presumably no matter what their economic condition may be at the time of the act. One has every justification for supposing that if one. of New Zea--lsfnd V coroners had been sent down to the southern iee barrier to hold a formal inquest on the death of Captain Oates, of the Scott expedition, he must have brought in a verdict of death whilst temporarily insane, but in the case of Oates, the jury was the British Empire, and the verdict was '/.that his? act was the conduct of a gallant gentleman."

A SPECIAL BEQUEST. I recall a case which occurred -in Sydney a few years ago, in which a man who committed suicide left quite a sane and logical reason for his act, and added, father pathetically, I thought, that he would be very much obliged if the coroner would refrain from including in the verdict 'that he died whilst in an unsound state of mind, as it would hamper his children's chances in the life he had found to be unprofitable. Despite this, appeal, the coroner brought in the stereotyped verdict, and, if I remember aright, instanced the man's request as further proof that he was not in his right mind when the deed was done. After all a man can only protest that he is sane, and that it would be an act having the golden quality of mercy to listen to the request of one bound* for the beyond not to reflect upon tW state of his mind. What more could a Balfour, a Lloyd George, a Rosebery, or.a Massey say under such circumstances? Then, if one is to accept \the British view of such a question as the correct one, it is not unfair to assume that the Japanese nation simply"" reeks with insanity, as up till a quarter of a century ago the act of hara-kiri was as common blight in the rice crops; but, bless you, the people who dug into their entrails with the time-honoured family blade were far from being considered to be of unsound mind. It was rather accepted as the act of the sane. Indeed, under some circumstances the persons who did not hara-kiri were deemed to have an incorrect sense of their duty to their fellow-men, an attitude unquestionably dictated by a twisted mind. Yet the Japs are a quick-witted, clever race, whose opinion on their cheerless topic of suicide is entitled to as much consideration as

our own. TEMPTED! Of course there are many eases where there is not the ; slightest doubt that the suicide has been mentally unsettled at the time of the dread act. One I remember distinctly, because a» a young reporter at the time I was sorely tempted by a relative offering all the money she possessed to keep the matter from getting into the paper. It looked like easy monkey, but I was then, as I am now, the slave of duty, and I had to relate how the deceased had died from the results of eating a box of matches for breakfast instead of the conventional bacon and eggs. But such people do not leave letters such as the one written by Alfred Stephens, so that there are times when the coroner delivers his verdict when in a sound state of mind. There are others, when

we have bur doubts. H.P. Wellington, [March JLft,