A LOVE TRAGEDY.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 May 1925, Page 9

A LOVE TRAGEDY.

SUICIDE AT SIXTEEN. PENNY-IN-SLOT LETTER. Sydney, April 26. Was a printed love letter, perhaps out of a “penny-in-the-slot” machine, the cause of Olive Isabella Jamieson, aged 16, committing suicide? The letter, passionately worded, was found printed on the girl’s clothes. It was printed on a small slip of paper, and Mr. Jamieson, the city coroner, said that he could quite understand that a girl reading such rubbish would get absurd ideas. It is thought that the girl, who was believed to be in love with a boy, got hold of the letter, and it had a morbid, effect on her. At the inquiry yesterday concerning the girl’s death the letter was submitted. It read:— My Darling Love, — How I have lived the few long hours since we parted Ido not know. The glow of the lovelight which radiates from those lustrous eyes in the picture of you which I have before me. as I write tells me you are true. I was made with jealousy. What a sad yet bitter thing love is. But, darling, forgive me. Let ma come to you and kiss away the tears I have caused you. You will kill me if you refuse, and my blood will be on your dear hands. 1 will die brokenhearted. Have pity on. yours forever.—B. Such a letter certainly was not written by a sixteen-year-old girl, and the girl’s mother, who was asked: “Where do they get this stuff from?” told the coroner she did not know. Frederick Chilton Moorhouse, a shop assistant, said that he had been keeping company with .the girl for about 18 months. She was at his place on Good Friday night, and they were on the best of terms. Just before she was going to go home she asked for a glass of water and, after taking it, said: “I have taken poison.” Witness said the girl moaned and screamed, and witness went to the telephone to get a doctor. The girl was taken to the Royal North Shore Hospital, where she died on April 10. Moorhouse said that a month before she came to his place they had quarrelled over a girl, but he thought it was all over. Charles Peter Thomson, a chemist, related how deceased, who was an employee of Washington H. Soul, had asked him for a certain poison, saying she wanted to kill cats. He told her he would not give her poison, but if she brought him a small piece of steak he would insert some in it. The girl brought a piece of steak the next day, and he made a small incision and placed three or four grains of poison in it. He told her to be careful of it, and said: “If you happened to take any it would be the end of you.” A verdict of suicide was recorded.