Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 22 July 1932
“Suffered Awful”
Denaby Woman’s “Comfortable” Suicide
Third Attempt
Mr. W. H. Carlile enquired at Conisborough on Tuesday into the death, from coal gas poisoning of Sarah Hill (58), 5, Annerley Street, Denaby, who was found by her husband just after Saturday midnight, sitting in a kitchen chair with a gas tube in her mouth and the gas turned full on.
Alfred Hill, colliery stone contractor, the husband, said his wife had “suffered awful” since 1926 with a bad leg. Lately it got worse, and she “wished the Lord would take her every day.”
On Sunday he retired up. stairs at 11-15 p.m., and she remained downstairs to bathe her leg. He must have dozed ‘off, and the next he beard was the dog barking at the foot of the stairs. He went down at 15-10 a.m., and the dog led him to his wife. She sat in a chair with a shawl over her head, a tube connected with the gas bracket and tied with a tape, was fastened round her neck.
He pulled the tube out of her mouth, turned of the gas, obtained assistance, and sent for the doctor.
The Coroner: Was she dead, do you think, when you found her ?—l didn’t think so first. She looked so comfortable sitting there.
The Coroner: Well, people sometimes do look more comfortable dead than alive. –That is so.
Twice before, in 1926, said Hill, his wife attempted to take her life.
Dr. J. McArthur said he attended the woman on and off since 1926 and latterly put her in the care of the district nurse. She suffered from extensive varicose ulcers of the left leg. When he called to the house at 12-30 a.m. on Monday he found she had been dead about half-an-hour from coal gas poisoning.
The Coroner found that the woman committee suicide by col gas poisoning while of unsound mind.