SUICIDE COMMITTED BY WORKLESS MAN.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 173, 23 July 1931, Page 16

SUICIDE COMMITTED BY WORKLESS MAN.

Because he could not get work Ernest Marsh, aged forty-five years, a married man with five children, hanged hims'elf at his home, 91 L\ r ttelton Street, Addington, yesterday morning. A verdict of suicide by hanging while in a state of deep mental depression was returned by the Coroner (Mr E. D. Mosley) at the inquest held in the afternoon. Sergeant Gilligan represented the police. Stanley Beckingsale, a neighbour, gave evidence that when he was called to Marsh’s home by Mrs Marsh, he found the body hanging from'a rafter in a shed at the rear of the house. He cut it down immediately but the man was dead. Her husband had been worried for

some time owing to his failure to get work, Mrs Lizzie Marsh stated, and during the past few days had been very depressed. lie was a paperhanger and painter by trade, but had had no work for the past five months. She and her husband had retired to bed at ten o’clock the previous night. They had awakened at six o’clock when her husband was still in bed. Witness dozed again and when she awakened again an hour later her husband was missing. Witness became anxious and made a search. She found the door of the shed locked. Becoming alarmed witness got an axe and forced the door to find her husband hanging from the rafters. She immediately called Mr Beckingsale and the police.