Sheffield Independent August 15 1908
Kilnhurst Sensation
Ex Deputy’s Attempted Suicide
An Ingenious Method
A sensational attempt at suicide was made yesterday by a well-known Kilnhurst man named James Culpin, an ex-deputy at the Thrybergh Hall colliery, who in a most curious manner, inflicted serious wounding on himself by shooting. The statement of a boy who saw him just prior to the act suggests how deliberately Culpin – who, by the way, is best known as Cooper – contemplated ending his days.
The would-be suicide had opened the kitchen window and fixed a gun, a double barrel breech loader, in the casement with the muzzle pointing towards himself. A fishing line was attached, apparently to the trigger, and he was winding up the reel until at length the cord pulled the trigger and discharge the contents at him.
It happened about 7 o’clock. They neighbour name George Christopher Pollard, who lives in the same yard at Victoria Street, Kilnhurst saw Culpin standing near the door of his house. A few seconds later he heard the report of the gun, and returned just in time to see Culpin stagger across the yard and fall down. Pollards investigation revealed that he was bleeding profusely from wounds under the right shoulder and chest.
PC Headland and Dr Dewick were summoned, and the man was removed to the Rotherham Hospital in a critical condition.
The bullet, which was subsequently found flattened near the yard wall, had passed right through him body under the right shoulder. In spite of his severe injury the man remained conscious. This
“I’m tired of living; I wanted to do away with myself,” he said, when spoken to on the matter, “it would have been a mercy if I had been taken out of the way.”
Culpin is 68 years of age, and suffered from ill health for some time, and, coupled with this, there is a fact that his domestic life has been very unhappy. His wife, the second one, is said to have left him on several occasions, and it is said she did so as recently as last Saturday. The whole circumstances have evidently preyed on his mind.