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Two items from different editions (First and Third) of the Evening Express of Tuesday 1st July 1902: -

John Tobin, aged 23 years, of Brierly Hill, Ebbw Vale, committed suicide on Sunday evening by cutting his throat. He belonged to the 3rd S.W.B. (Militia), and had only recently returned home from Aldershot, where he had been detained in hospital after serving in the war.


Last evening Mr. Dauncey, deputy-coroner, held an inquest at Ebbw Vale Police-station on the body of John Tobin, 23, single, Butcher's-court, who cut his throat on Sunday night. The deceased had only recently been discharged from Netley Hospital, after an attack of fever contracted in South Africa. He has been in ill-health for some time. After his tea on Sunday he suddenly secured a razor, and proceeded to his mother's bedroom, where he cut his throat in such a determined manner that death ensued instantly. - A verdict of "Suicide whilst temporarily insane" was returned.

Thanks Berenice, no memorial for this poor man, another victim of one assumes enteric that appears to drive people mad.

I thought of contacting Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, which has responsibility for the cemeteries in the Ebbw Vale area, but there's a £58.00 administration fee for a burial search. I'll pass on that.

Twenty years after Tobin's death, his might well have been considered to have been a war-related death, and his grave would have been cared for by the Imperial War Graves Commission. I did come across a snippet in an early-1900s newspaper that the War Department had taken on the responsibility of caring for British war graves in South Africa.