Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1889-07-06 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

WHITBY  SAD END  TRADESMAN.  A PATHETIC STORY.  A pathetic story was told on Thursday at the Coroner's inquest held at Newholm near Whitby, concerning the death of Mr Richard Dillon, who committed suicide that morning by hanging himself in his bed- room with • portion of bed limm. Mr Dillon was at one time a successful and prosperous manufacturer of jet orua• meats, and personady • kind and generous man lie was a great employer of labour, and highly popular among the working classes in his branch of industry. The wave or depression in the jet trade came on, but he unfortunately failed to realise its lesson, and held on to stock worth at one time a gr, at deal, but winch rapidly diminished in value, and became of no account. He fought hard tor rawly years against the tide of depression, but ultimately it overwhelmed him, and he became conlerably. even painfully, reduced in circumstances. From a large employer of labour he became rftet,i a ly a labourer himself, with the digs !vantage that was unable to hold his own against those who were aeousterned to labour. At the inquest last night his wile told the jury that her husband nal left the vills,4e day after day trying to sell his goods, but those to whom he hoped to sell told him time after time that they could not buy. Wearied out with his efforts to sell the results of his labour, mortified at so many rejectious of his haudiwork, he many a tame returned home excited, and expressed himself weary of existence, though he never intimated that he would bring that existence to a close by his own hand. He mourned for the days that had gou•; he failed to realise that the uays of possible prosperity for him had passed. He frequently said to his WI e, "The merchants won't buy my goods, they all say 'No, no.' It was not so in my day. When poor men came to in I did not treat them so. I bought their goods, and they were made happy." The poor fellow could not find a market for the fruits of his industry, and so became dejected and sad. This went on for so long a time that it drove him into a profound melancholy. He was restless and peculiar, and no words of wifely comfort, no acts of domestic felicity, no approach of friendly or neigbouring intercourse could dispel the gloom which enwrapped his mind. Apparently determined to try to end his tronble, to relieve himself of the care which had become so burdensome, he rose from his bed yesterday morning, and in his desperation tore • portion ofi ins bed hum wrapped it round his neck, and suspeided himself with it from the cornice of his sleeping berth. In • few minutes he was in the sleep of death, for the iuterval between his wife seeing him alive and well and his suspension from the bed-post was less than a quarter of an hour. The poor lady was paralysed at the shookiug sight. She managed, however, to run out from the house and call in a foot passenger on the road, teliing him that her hesbaud bad hung himself in his bed-room. She gave him • knife in his hand, and urged him to run up stairs, which he did. The siAtt which met his gaze was that of hie neighbour hanging by the neck from the bed-post. He tried to cut the linen by whi,th Mr Dillon was suspended by the neck, but the keife whieh Mrs Dillon had given him for the purpose was blunt, and refused to perform the operation. He, therefore, used his own pocket knife, which he now exhibited to the jury, and severed the striug of linen. But it was too late—Mr Dillon was dead, black in the face and pulselmis. And so elided a that had been marked with early prosperity, followed by anguish and mental depression, as the result of unavoidable decay in an industry in which the heart had centred itself, and in which all hope rested.—The jury took the merciful and probably just view of the act which the poor Clllll had committed by recording lima suanimous opinion that he was temporarily unsound in mind.'