CURIOUS FATALITY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 209, 4 August 1937, Page 9

CURIOUS FATALITY

WOMAN’S SUICIDE. MAN KILLED IN FALL. : CORONER’S COMMENTS. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received August 4, 9.50 a.m. LONDON, Aug. 3. The Coroner, Mr Ingleby Oddie, recording a verdict of suicide in connection with the death of Mi's Warburton, drew a distinction between constructive murder and constructive manslaughter, which is interesting nowadays because it is not so strictly interpreted as formerly, inasmuch as a motorist killing a person by driving dangerously is usually punished for dangerous driving without being charged with manslaughter. Mr Oddie expressed the opinion that a verdict of murder would be improper in the present case, though an old legal doctrine established that when a person committing a felony unintentionally killed another he was guilty of constructive murder; similarly, a person committing a misdemeanour and unintentionally causing another’s death was guilty of constructive manslaughter; but, since Mrs Warburton was not fully in possession of her faculties when she committed suicide, she was not guilty of felonious intent. For that ( reason the death of Mr Black was accidental, and a verdict was returned accordingly. Mr Warburton’s husband disclosed that his wife had previously attempted to commit suicide.

A cable on July 31 stated: Having claimed his letters from the Young Men’s Christian Association, Birmingham, a visitor, Mr Donald Black, died in hospital after Mrs Mary Warburton, aged 65. fell on him from a window on the fourth floor of a building. She was taken to hospital moaning “oh, the poor boy,” and succumb ed from her injuries.