GAS ASPHYXIATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12284, 5 April 1918, Page 5

GAS ASPHYXIATION.

VERDICT OF SUICIDE. Fatality at St Albans. An inquest touching the death of William Alfred Burton Hobbs, who was found dead at his residence in St Albans last night, was held before Mr T. A. B. Bailey, Coroner, this morning. Amy Gertrude Hobbs said that she was the widow of the deceased. Her husband, who was fifty-four years of age, had been addicted to drink for some lime past. On Wednesday evening he was very much the worse of liquor. Witness left and spent the night with her sister. When she returned at about 6.30 p.m. yesterday she found the house shut up. 'When she opened the door she noticed a strong smell of gas, and turned off the meter. She saw her husband lying on the sofa in the kitchen, and as she suspected that something was wrong she immediately sent for Mr Leach. Witness thought she noticed the flexible gas tube used for the gas ring on the end of the sofa near her husband’s head. Frank Ryshworth Leach, storeman, residing at 62, Fitzgerald Street, said that at the request of Mrs Hobbs he went down to the house, where lie found the deceased lying on the couch in the kitchen. He was then dead. Witness noticed a strong smell of gas in the house. John M’Lcod, police constable, stated that he visited Hobbs’s house. A flexible tube connected with the gas from the side of the fireplace was stretched to the head of the couch, and the end of the tube was close to deceased’s mouth. Witness considered that the man had been dead about ten hours. The Coroner returned a verdict that death was due to gas asphyxiation, and that deceased had committed suicide, but there was no evidence as to tiro state of his mind.