INFLUENZA PATIENT’S MAD ACT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3181, 29 March 1911, Page 7

INFLUENZA PATIENT’S MAD ACT.

‘ READS BURIAL SERVICE 1 AND THEN RUNS AMOK.

Great excitement was created in the little village! of Bilton Hill, near Rugby (Eng ) on February 7 by the sudden dementia of a bricklayer’s laborer xvho. after .apparently reading the burial service from the Prayer Book, rushed downstairs in his nightdress with an open ranor, wounded four people who barred his way A and passed out into the night. Ten constables and about twenty civilians spent the Avliole night searching with lanterns over the countryside and it Avas not until about noon- on the folloAving day that the madman Avas found at the bottom of a hedge in a field near the village churchyard. Apparentlv he Avas trying to bury hunelf in the ground, and as the result of exposure and loss of blood: from a wound in the throat lie Avas in a. weak condition. He aaus taken to tlie hospital at Rugby under a covering of sacks. ■ After the occurrence a Prayer Book, opened at the burial service, Avas found on Harding’s bed. All the. other person® injured Avere taken to the hospital. Joseph Harding, the cause of all the trouble, is an ex-soldiev, forty-txvo years of age. He had been employed in succession by several local builders as a blicklayer’s laborer, and bad also done pobbimg gardening, and- Avas regarded as a most respectable, hard-working man. He/ had recently suffered from, influenza. He first attacked- his sister, Avith whonm he lodged, and her little son, aged ten years. With a razor he slashed his sister’s face and cut the boy’s throat though not dangerously. Hearing screams in the house, a coachman named Goodsell hurried to the/ cottage, and at the bade door met the madman flourishing a razor. Goodsell was 1 at once attacked, and liis face cut Airs Goodsell 1 , Avlio followed her husband, was also wounded, and then Harding, wearing only liis night attire, rushed down the entry, and into tlie road.