Grocer's suicide (1865)

Post date: Mar 25, 2013 8:32:10 PM

Extract from Maidstone Telegraph 5th August 1865.

WATERINGBURY.—

Suicide of Mr. R. Jude.—

An inquest was held the King's Head Inn, on Saturday last, by J. N. Dudlow, Esq., and a respectable jury, touching the death of Robert Jude, a retired grocer, of this parish. Ann Field, a charwoman, stated that she had been engaged for the past week in packing the deceased's furniture, as he was about leaving Wateringbury. She had noticed his manner was very strange. Recollected his coming home on Thursday night, when he seemed very strange. Witness assisted Mrs. Jude in getting him to bed and bathing his head with water, but as he got worse a surgeon was sent for. Thos. Jude, innkeeper, of Gravesend, brother the deceased, stated that the deceased came to his house on Wednesday night. Witness thought there was something unusual in his manner. He stopped the night at his house. Witness called him on the following morning about half-past 8. He had two cups of tea, and witness went with him the station, but persuaded him not to go by that train. They returned, but he left in the afternoon the 3.10 train for Wateringbury. Deceased had made more than one attempt upon his life before. He was 62 years of age. Mr. H. M. Gould, surgeon, stated that he was called in on Thursday night, the 27th, and found the deceased in a state of lethargy. He applied the stomach pump, and succeeded in extracting a discoloured fluid, which smelt very strong of laudanum. Deceased was sinking fast, and died at about one o'clock on Friday morning. A bottle of Battley's sedative compound was found in a drawer, about a dram, or sixty drops, of which had been taken out, but witness did not think that sufficient to produce the effect, and his opinion was that deceased had taken some laudanum besides the compound. He had been called in twice previously to deceased when he had attempted self destruction. The jury returned a verdict that deceased destroyed himself whilst in an unsound state of mind.