NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE suicide of Mr. Justice Willes, which took place at eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, at his residence, Otterspool, wear Watford, has thrown a gloom over the week. The act was -committed under an excitement of heart and brain due, it is be- lieved, to suppressed gout, and which for some days previously had affected his pulse so gravely th at, according to his medical attendant, the pulsations intermitted sixteen times in each minute. He was -constitutionally delicate, had suffered from inflammation of the lungs and disease of the heart five years ago, and had had four attacks ,of gout within the last three years, the last being a long attack at the beginning of the present year. His clerk, Mr. John James Barnes, who was staying in his house at the time of the suicide, -gave the most explicit evidence on the inquest as to the changed manner and extreme depression of the Judge for some days before his death, and also testified to his previous horror of suicide, and -even fear and dislike of firearms ; for, unlike most of our Judges, Mr. Justice Wales was no sportsman. It appears that Mr. Justice Willes had been greatly overworked during the last (August) assizes at Liverpool, and had returned complaining of great sleepi- ciess, and yet inability to get rest. His memory had failed him more than once on the days preceding the suicide, and the jury were certainly fully warranted in the verdict—" Sir J. S. Wines :shot himself with a pistol, not being at the time of sound mind." There was no better, shrewder, or more independent lawyer on the Bench, and his judgments on the first Election- petition cases laid down principles which every other Judge fol- lowed. A curious instance of his singular independence, though hardly perhaps of his soundness of judgment, was the opinion which he gave in support of the appointment of Sir R. Collier, mid the Common Pleas, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He was made a Judge at the early age of forty-one, and was only fifty-eight at the time of his death.
