Biography

The body of the deceased was found lying in a room at the rear of his shop in Clifton Street, with a bullet wound in the head.There was a breech-loading gun lying beside him, with a string attached from the trigger to the right foot. The right barrel contained an empty cartridge shell and the right barrel was empty. Arthur Albert Crooke, medical practitioner at Lawlers, examined the body of Joseph Wright at his premises in Clifton street and found that death had been instantaneous from a gunshot wound with the muzzle of the gun placed below his jaw, with his head bent forward nearly at right angles to his chest. The charge smashed the lower jaw in several places and then passed through the upper part of the spinal cord, at the junction of the spinal cord with the brain and into the cerebellum. Dr Crooke subsequently held a post mortem on the body at the morgue and found the heart and lungs, kidneys, stomach and spleen to be in an advanced state of disease. The doctor believed that the state he was in physically was liable to cause a very depressed state of mind and would be "apt to be worse at one time than another". Wright was one of the earliest settlers in Lawlers, and was said to have been of some means. He owned the shop he occupied in Clifton street and up to recently had been conducting an aerated water factory which he sold a few months previously. It was also stated that he owned some property in England. A will was discovered written on a page of one of his account books and dated November 21, 1910, but had not been witnessed. The deceased is buried in Plot 8 at Lawlers Cemetery.