The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

The following melancholy affair lately happened at Chichester:--A young man, son of a tradesman, being intoxicated with liquor, went to his mother, and demanded a shilling of her, which she refused, and requested him to go to bed; but he persisted in his request, and threatened, if she continued to deny him that sum, he would instantly go and hang himself, the means he so often made use of with effect to extort money from her, when others would not. His sister, who was but just come from London, to see her friends, expostulated with her brother on the impropriety of his request. This so worked on his passion, that he immediately went into the stable, fixed his handkerchief to a tack; where he was found seated on the ground, leaning with his neck in such a manner, that those who afterwards took him up, on first seeing him, supposed he was only in joke; but on speaking to him, and not finding any answer or motion they disengaged his neck, and used every means prescribed by the faculty to bring him to life, but to no purpose. On his sister's seeing him, she ran screaming into the house, which the mother hearing, and supposing what had occasioned her cries immediately sunk lifeless on the floor. The girl has been ever since in a most distracted state of mind at so melancholy a loss of a mother and brother, who were both interred in one grave, on Thursday night. The jury sat on the body, and brought in their verdict lunacy.