Obituaries Australia

The races which were to have been held on Thursday last were postponed owing to a very sad circumstance which occurred on Wednesday evening. The town is usually very quiet and so it chanced that many people heard, and remarked upon, the unusual sound of firearms; two reports were heard, there being a definite interval between them, and shortly afterwards it was generally known that Mr James Cobben Anderson had shot himself. The first shot seems to have been fired at random, and passed cornerwise through the iron walls of his own house right into one of the rooms of the adjacent cottage, greatly frightening the occupant, who sat trying to hush a fretful child asleep. The second turned upon himself, penetrated the misguided man’s brain, and death took place before the arrival of the doctor, who had to give an opiate to the bereaved wife. Difficulties of a financial nature are stated to have preyed upon the man’s mind, and with sad fatality he fled to one of man’s worst enemies – drink – hoping thus to lessen care. He leaves a wife and three young children, for whom much sympathy is felt. A subscription list has been opened for their relief, which, it is trusted, will meet with considerable support; and this afternoon Mr Keefe and Mr R. Duke are canvassing the town for helpers in a concert, which is to be got up for a like purpose, thus proving that sympathy and sorrow go hand in hand, even in the maligned back blocks.