WAS HE INSANE?

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXVIII, Issue 99, 21 April 1933, Page 2

WAS HE INSANE?

YOUNG MAN’S SUICIDE STRANGE LETTERS LEFT SYDNEY, APRIL 8. The other day a case of self-destruc-tion came before the Coroner’s Court, and the presiding official pronounced the usual verdict “Suicide while of unsound mind.” This verdict has become almost a sacred tradition at British Coroners’ inquests, but a case occurred here a short time ago that the most conservative Coroner might find hard to classify. There lived at Bondi a young man of French extraction, Stanley Shrive. His parents were in London, he was only twenty-three years old, he was well and strong, he always was fashionably dressed, he was well educated, he had over £l2O to his credit in the Commonwealth Bank—and on Tuesday), March 21, he shot himself on Bondi Beach. He left one letter addressed “To Whom it May Concern” and another addressed to the Coroner, and these two epistles go some distance toward explaining his state of mind when he took this fatalstep.

“Neither Cowardly Nor Brave” “I have often read of suicide and felt that it may be either cowardly or brave. However, in this case, it canhot definitely be considered as either. The prospect causes me no fear; I have no belief in an after life, nor any belief in the essential goodness of this one.” Strange sentiments, surely, for a healthy young man to express, but the test of the letter is stranger still. It states how, having decided to end his life, he had come out to the beach the previous night with his rifle, but the breech was rusty and the cartridge jammed. After half an hour’s struggle

with it, he was compelled to give the job up. But Stanley Shrive was a persistent and methodical person, and he had not changed his mind. Next day, after a sound sleep, he ale a good breakfast, played some tunes on his melodion and proceeded to clean and oil his rifle. Then he played picquet with some friends and at lunch time he talked with them about life and death, and sang a comic song. He went out to do some shopping in the afternoon, ate a large steak for tea, dressed carefully —he was always punctilious about his appearance—and went out to a dance. He got back about midnight, changed into his ordinary clothes and shoes, took his rifle, now ready for use, walked out along the beach and there shot himself. Ho was found lying there next morning.

Now what are we to make of all this? The letters that Shrive left throw a good deal of light on his mental condition. In one he writes: “I have no trade, no outstanding ability in any direction, an inclination to be honest, a sensitive disposition and no particular ambition as a handicap, and so people, without your permission, 1 Withdraw from the race.” This passage occurs in the letter left "To Whom it May Concern” but in the letter addressed to the Coroner—“to save you trouble in any respect as regards myself”—he is even more definite and specific: “I have decided that I am of no use to the human race, nor ever will be, and that there is no place where I can exist amicably with my neighbours, owing to my uselessness in regard to earning a living, and I refuse to be a permanent parasite on society” —and that is all. Of course, the verdiet was “suicide” —but was ho insane 9