Biography

The deceased was found four miles from Kookynie in an unconscious state, the wheel of a loaded dray having passed over him. The injured man was immediately taken to the hospital, where he expired early on Sunday morning. It appeared that Jessup had loaded his two drays for the Edjudina district and, after the accident, the horses, having no driver, circled round to Kookynie, where they were met by Andrew Bruce, a slaughterman, who, concluding that an accident had happened, stopped the horses and sent a man named David Norman on horseback to see if anything was wrong. Norman returned on the tracks of the horses until he found their owner on the road, unconscious. Reporting back to Mr Bruce, the men then set out to retrieve the wounded Mr Jessup, arriving back in Kookynie about 6.30pm, whereupon Mr Jessup, who was by then conscious, told his wife and friends how the accident had happened. Between 8 and 9pm that night, Jessup appeared to be taking a bad turn and he was removed to the Government Hospital, where he died about 6am the following morning, retaining consciousness almost to the last.

A postmortem examination was made and the doctor reported that death was caused by exhaustion and syncope following acute peritonitis. The deceased was considered to be a very old and respected man in the district, leaving his wife to mourn her loss. Having married in Kookynie in 1904, the Jessups lost their only child, also named James, in 1904, being stillborn. The story of that little child also appears in this website.  

James Jessup Snr is buried in Plot number 25 of the Anglican portion of the Kookynie Cemetery.