For those of you that were looking for Joshua for me last week on WDWTYA and previously - I've found him.
Another result due to Gale Trial, it's a very sad and tragic sad story - see below
From Reynolds Newspaper, July 9, 1865
Extraordinary Suicide in Hoxton - On Tuesday an inquiry was held by Mr John Humphreys, Middlesex coroner at the Green Man Tavern, Hoxton Old Town, respecting the suicide of Joshua Webster, aged 39 years. The deceased was a Sawyer, living in Rose Street, Hoxton and since the death of his wife recently he became melancholy, took to drinking to excess and so ill used and neglected his children that they left him last week. On Saturday week he climbed upon the water butt and contrived to let himself down head foremost into the water through a small hole in the lid or cover, which was nailed down. His next door neighbours had their attention attracted by his feet which were visible above the top of the water butt, and with great difficulty he was got out. Dr Burchell was called in, and pronounced him to be quite dead. Dr Burchell said it was next to an impossibility for the deceased to have got into the butt by accident; he must have used great ingenuity to accomplish the feat. The coroner having summed up, the jury returned a verdict "Suicide while of unsound mind"
What a dreadful way to die ... and how he must have loved his wife to do that and abandon a young family (my gt grandfather would have been only 4yrs old) The strange thing is his father committed suicide by hanging 9yrs earlier...
I still have to find his death certificate and that of Ann his wife but now at least I can narrow it down to a year.
Another result due to Gale Trial, it's a very sad and tragic sad story - see below
From Reynolds Newspaper, July 9, 1865
Extraordinary Suicide in Hoxton - On Tuesday an inquiry was held by Mr John Humphreys, Middlesex coroner at the Green Man Tavern, Hoxton Old Town, respecting the suicide of Joshua Webster, aged 39 years. The deceased was a Sawyer, living in Rose Street, Hoxton and since the death of his wife recently he became melancholy, took to drinking to excess and so ill used and neglected his children that they left him last week. On Saturday week he climbed upon the water butt and contrived to let himself down head foremost into the water through a small hole in the lid or cover, which was nailed down. His next door neighbours had their attention attracted by his feet which were visible above the top of the water butt, and with great difficulty he was got out. Dr Burchell was called in, and pronounced him to be quite dead. Dr Burchell said it was next to an impossibility for the deceased to have got into the butt by accident; he must have used great ingenuity to accomplish the feat. The coroner having summed up, the jury returned a verdict "Suicide while of unsound mind"
What a dreadful way to die ... and how he must have loved his wife to do that and abandon a young family (my gt grandfather would have been only 4yrs old) The strange thing is his father committed suicide by hanging 9yrs earlier...
I still have to find his death certificate and that of Ann his wife but now at least I can narrow it down to a year.
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