CORONER’S INQUEST.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 827, 6 February 1868, Page 2

CORONER’S INQUEST.

An inquest was held yesterday by H. J Perliam, Esq., coroner, and a respectable jury, on the body William Edmund Garner, at Mr Cathro’s Hotel, St. John’s Bush. The following witnesses were examined: — John Peake, farmer, Kai Iwi, deposed—--1 knew deceased who was my brother-in-law. On Friday, 31st January, he met me in town and asked if I would take him out to my place as lie thought the change would do him a deal of good. I took him out that afternoon in my trap. I noticed an absent manner about him, I often having to speak two or three times before he would answer me. He was continually, that evening, picking his fingers and cutting sticks with his knife. Between nine and ten o’clock we went to bed. 1 made him sleep with me putting him to the back of the bed, so that if he woke in the night I would know’ of it. That night he was very restless. In the morning I asked him how he had slept that night, and he said lie had not slept so well for a long time. He took a hearty breakfast that morning. Through the day he accompanied me to my brother’s and back. At dinner he also ate w T ell, remarking on his appetite. After dinner his son rode out from Wanganui with some clothes and physic. Deceased asked me if he should take any of the medicine, and at first I tried to dissuade him from taking it, but he said he thought it would do him good, when I told him to take it, and I took some, after which deceased took about a dessert spoonful. We afterwards went out, and while out he called me aside into

another paddock as lie had something to say to me. At that moment I noticed an expression of madness. He asked me if I had heard anything of all this. I said I had only heard reports. He then told me of his being in company with some Maori women at the Red Lion Hotel, and that while he had one on his knee the door opened and some one he knew entered. That, he said, was the cause of all the trouble. 1 laughed at it, and said,thatif that was all, he need not mind about it. When I had spoken 1 observed that the expression of his face changed again to the ordinary aspect. He afterwards added : “ But you must know that the affair regarding my family is perfectly true.” During the conversation I believed him to be insane. Nothing particular occurred till I took him to bed at twenty minutes past nine. I put him into my room—the same a 3 we slept in the night before. I saw him in bed, when I went back to the sitting-room. I was uneasy and went back and forward often to the bed-room. The last time I went in I was struck with the mad expression on him worse than ever, so much so that 1 stopped in the middle of the room. I had returned to the sitting-room the last time—at 5 min to 10 o'clock —1 had hardly sat down when the dogs began to bark ; my cousin, George Peake—who was in the room at the time—made the remark that the horse was in the.garden, and so went ont to shut the gate. I went into the bed-room and found the bed empty. As I passed through the passage I noticed that the front door was open. I searched some time and had my cousin to assist. I then went over for my brother and we searched together till 2 o’clock when he left again, and all through the night I searched and at daybreak also, before going into town. Several people came out on Monday and the following day to assist in the search About two o’clock on Tuesday, Mr A. McDonald and I were returning to the house in despair of finding deceased, we sat down on a log to examine a track, when we came to the conclusion that it was a Maori’s. On rising to go away, after staying there a few minutes, my eye happened to catch sight of a white object. We turned at once and found Wm. Garner lying there. We called in the others, and after directing them not to move the body, I went into town for the police. I returned, and the police not coming before dark, 1 had the body carried in doors.

R. C. Earle, M.D., deposed—He had known deceased for about twelve months, and had been attending him for a month past. Deceased had been suffering from abberation of the intellect, with marked symptoms of softening of the brain. When I last saw him alive, I recommended a change. I saw his body next on Tuesday night, and found a gash in his throat, extending from the left side of the windpipe almost to his right ear, dividing the jugular vein, the croted artery, and injuring the windpipe. The wound was such as might have been inflicted by himself by the pen knife [produced] which he held in his hand. I removed the knife from his hand. The deceased might have been dead three or four days when ,I saw him. The physic I sent him w r as a tonic. The melancholic phase of softening-o’f the brain might induce a nun to commit suicide. The jury returned the following verdict : That the deceased, William Edmund Garner, committed suicide while labouring under temporary insanity.