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Colonist, Volume XXXV, Issue 7172, 18 November 1891, Page 4

Ballarat has been the scene of a sensational suicide. A man named Henry Dockrell entered the shop of Mr M'Allester, grocer, of Victoria street, and asked a young man ; named William Gray, who was in charge, if he could lend him a sharp knife for a minute. Gray unsuspectingly handed him one used for cutting bacon, &c, and Dockrell walked to the door, and quickly, though deliberately, cut his throat at one stroke, severing the windpipe. Gray, seeing what was happening jumped the counter and wrested the knife from Doekrell s grasp, but the fatal injury had been already caused, for though taken in a cart immediately to the Hospital, Dockerell was dead before reaching there. In his pocket was found a letter, showing that the act was premeditated, in which he stated that he intended doing away with himself, that he had drunk himself to death, and hoped that drink in every form would be abolished. The drink, he added, had been his infatuation and death, and boys and girls should never touch it, or they would come to his end.