Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser/1914/Former M.P.'s Suicide. Ex-candidate for Bury's pathetic letter.

Distressing details were revealed at the inquest at Westminster yesterday upon Mr. Reginald Jaffray Lucas (48), at one time Unionist M.P. for Portsmouth, and Unionist candidate for Bury in 1906, who died fro wounds self-inflected with a revolver.

The evidence of the deceased's relatives, the Rev. Francis Lucas, of Wickham Market, Suffolk, his brother, and Mrs. Amy Maude, a sister, was to the effect that he was undergoing treatment from a specialist for a complaint of the throat. Mrs. Maude, calling on her brother in response to a telephone summons on Tuesday at the Albany, Piccadilly, where he lived, found him jumpy and nervous.

He complained that he had had a "terrible doing" that morning, but she called him down and left him in the evening. The morning before he died from revolver wounds he said to her, "I must have been off my head when I did it."

After the testimony of servants at the Albany, Dr. Monier Williams, of Onslow Gardens, said that deceased was suffering from consumption of the lungs, and was under treatment from Sir St. Clair Thomson. In Tuesday last he confessed to witness that he had shot himself four times through the chest, and expressed the fear that he had made a bad job of it. He died the following Saturday.

A letter fro the deceased to his brother read as follows: "I have a malignant disease. A sanatorium cure to me would be intolerable. All medical skill can do is at best, palliative. I have been suffering much pain and discomfort. The future must be all pain and sickness, and I should be a burden to myself and nuisance to everybody else. The best thing is to hasten the end. I trust to the mercy of the Almighty God who has blessed to me so abundantly. I am very sorry for my sisters and a few others who will care. God bless you all."

A verdict of "Suicide whilst of unsound mind" was returned.