"An inquest touching the death of the returned soldier, William Hunter, who was found hanging in a bathroom at the Temperance Hotel last Wednesday, was held at the Court-house yesterday morning before Mr H. Kilgour, acting coroner, and a jury of four. The evidence disclosed that deceased was a married man with three children, aged about 30 years. He was a member of the Sixteenth Reinforcements and returned in August, 1919. Deceased suffered from shell shock, but on his return from the front he was very depressed and was treated by the doctor as a man Buffering from heart disease. Then in May, 1920, he was committed to Seacliff Mental Hospital. His condition was due. to a- severe break-down of nerves caused by shell shock. That the deceased had escaped from Seacliff Mental Hospital on November 14th of last year. Since deceased escaped from the hospital his friends and the police had "lost all trace of him". He had evidently been in the back blocks somewhere. The jury returned a verdict that deceased committed suicide whilst of an unsound state of mind, caused by a fit of mental depression following shell shock. —“Argus.”"

HOKITIKA GUARDIAN, 18 JANUARY 1921, PAGE 2