Suicide at Wheatley Hill.

Deputy-Coroner Pearce held an inquest at Wheatley Hill yesterday concerning the death of Oliver Hugo Griffiths, 30, whose body was found at six o'clock on Wednesday morning hanging from a beam in the tub repairing shop at Wheatley Hill Colliery.

Mrs. Bannister, of Shop Street, Wheatley Hill, said Griffiths had previously lodged at her house. She last saw him on Tuesday night at 8.30, when he said he was going to walk to Horden.

George Earnshaw, a workman at Wheatley Hill Colliery, spoke to finding deceased's body hanging in the tub shop.

P.C. Walter Robson, of Wheatley Hill, said he was called to the shop and cut the rope by which the man was suspended. Deceased had evidently obtained the rope from a stoker engine-house about 30 yards away. He had also moved a tub from the end of the shop to the point where he was found hanging. By standing on the tub he gave himself a drop of about two feet. Deceased had lost two brothers in the war, and witness knew that this had caused him to be depressed.

The jury returned a verdict that Griffiths had committed suicide by hanging himself from a beam while suffering from mental depression caused by the loss of two brothers killed at the front.