Obituaries Australia

We have this week the painful task of recording another death by drowning. Although the circumstances connected with the case appear strange and mysterious, we cannot in any way advance an opinion opposite to the verdict of the Coroner's Jury, who, by the protracted decision, evinced opinions with ourselves, that a more than usual degree of suspicion was attached to the death of the unfortunate individual in question—suspicion, amounting to a fear that a foul murder had been committed. However, after a long, tedious, and strict investigation, and a scrutinizing cross-examination of the witnesses upon the case, the Jury, after an adjourned meeting of upwards of six hours, returned a verdict of "Found drowned, not known how the death happened." Too much praise cannot be given to the Coroner and those Gentlemen composing the Jury, for the judicious, patient, and indefatigable investigation of this melancholy affair; and let us hope their decision has been the real facts, and that self-immolation occasioned this lamentable catastrophe, which has been productive of no ordinary sensation in the neighbourhood where the body was found. It appeared in evidence, that on Sunday last, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the body was drawn from a clay-hole in the Brick-fields, accidentally discovered by some boys, playing with a small boat in the water. Immediately upon its discovery, Mr. Capon, the Chief Constable, with his usual prompt attention, had it removed in a shell to the nearest public-house, for a Coroner's Inquest. It proved to be a Mrs. Uther, a female about 30 years of age, the wife of a respectable tradesman of Sydney, who, having eloped from her husband's protection, leaving him with two or three children, has these two years past lived in Hobart Town, pursuing a life of infamy, depravity, and guilt—the dangerous consequences of bad society and drunkenness, and which no doubt has, in one of the moments of inebriation, hastened her, unbidden and uncalled, into presence of an offended Maker, to answer for those iniquities so long persevered in, and summed up by a deed repugnant to every law, human and divine—SELF-MURDER.