SUICIDE IN INFIRMARY

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1929, Page 15

SUICIDE IN INFIRMARY

INCURABLE PATIENT’S ACT

PARALYSIS DUE TO ACCIDENT.

SAD CIRCUMSTANCES REVEALED.

By Telegraph.—Press Association

Auckland, Last Nig)t.

Pathetic circumstances were revealed at the inquest on Francis Raymond Hyde, aged 25, a single man who died in the Auckland hospital early this morning. He was paralysed from the waist down and was an inmate of an Auckland infirmary, where he was found yesterday afternoon lying unconscious with a large wound in the right groin and a double-bladed clasp knife lying on a nearly table. His death ensued in hospital as the result of shock and loss of blood.

Hyde, who had been engaged in farm work near Gisborne, left New Zealand in September, 1927, to try his fortune in Canada, having little more than his third-class fare. Only three weeks after arriving there he was driving a dray loaded with wood when the horse swerved and ran one of the wheels on to a log. Hyde was thrown to the ground, one wheel passing over him and severing his spinal column. In the absence of any workers’ compensation provision in the law of British Columbia Hyde was unable to obtain much relief from his employer who declared he had no means, while the owner of the farm declared the responsibility to be that of his lessee. Therefore all - that Hyde obtained was £-10, and he was then notified he would be placed on a steamer going to New Zealand, he being thus technically deported from the country. On arrival at Auckland he was removed to the hospital and later to the infirmary. Tho superintendent of the infirmary said deceased had never threatened suicide and was always cheerful. Just after the finding of deceased witness received a telegram from deceased’s brother asking to be immediately informed .as "to deceased’s condition, an inquiry which had never been received before. It was possible that deceased had written to his brother telling him what he w-as about to do.

A verdict of death through loss of blood resulting from a self-inflicted wound was returned by the coroner, Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M.