----- Original Message ----- From: "Tia McCombes" <tiamccombes@yahoo.com.au> To: <aus-vic-ne@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 1:05 PM Subject: [AVNE] Was Death adder, now deaths that make the papers > Any one else with deaths/accidents that make the paper? In my husband's family there is a report of an attempted suicide that made The Argus in 1874. Many of the men in the family are known to have enjoyed drinking so the current generation find this story quite amusing. Catherine. The Argus, Tuesday September 8, 1874 A curious attempt at suicide was made yesterday morning. A seafaring man named Henry Ludwick, who had been stopping for sometime past at the Carriers' Arms Hotel, King-street, West Melbourne, on Sunday secretly abstracted from a case a bottle of whiskey, took it to his room, knocked the neck off, and drank nearly the whole of the contents. While suffering from the effects of the drink he tried to go downstairs, but fell and hurt his leg. He was told by the landlady that he would have to quit the place and go to his friends who were better able to keep him than the hotelkeeper. At about half-past 6 the next morning, blood was observed dropping from the ceiling of the room under his, and the landlady found that Ludwick was bleeding from a wound in his right arm, which he had evidently himself inflicted with a razor. He had previously tired a handkerchief round his arm. The wound was cut across the prominent vein on the inside of the elbow, and Dr Burke, who was called in and stopped the bleeding, said that Ludwick appeared to have some surgical knowledge, from the manner in which he made the cut. Ludwick was given in charge of the Hotham police, and remanded to gaol for seven days for medical treatment. The wound does not appear likely to result seriously. Ludwick, who is 64 years old, has been master of a ship, but of late has been without money. It is supposed that depression of spirits, following as a reaction after the excessive drinking, caused him to attempt suicide.