John Blacklock

By Morag T Fyfe

The Morning Post newspaper of 27th August 1846 carried the following article first published in the Glasgow Courier.

DREADFUL CASE OF SUICIDE. – On Monday, an elderly man named John Blacklock, a clerk in a writer’s office in this city, committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor in a most deliberate and shocking manner, at his lodgings, Guildry-court, Bridgegate. The unfortunate man, it appears, had been confined to the house for a few days with illness, but not apparently of a serious nature, and there had been nothing in his manner during that period which could afford the slightest indication to the inmates of the house of his meditating an attempt on his own life; nor were his circumstances such as could be considered likely to produce depression of mind. Yesterday morning he seems to have intimated to his landlady a desire to be served with a cup of tea about eleven o’clock; and on her entering his room about that hour to supply him with the beverage, in accordance with his request, he (being then in bed) manifested some irritability of temper at being disturbed. In about an hour afterwards the attention of the people of the house was attracted by a noise in the room, and on entering, the unhappy man was found extended on the floor in the midst of his blood, which streamed from a dreadful wound across his throat, evidently inflicted by means of a razor which lay beside him. Medical aid was immediately procured, but life was quite extinct. The motive which had impelled the unfortunate man to the act of self-destruction appears quite inexplicable to every one with whom he was in any way connected here. We understand he was a married man, but living separate from his wife, whose place of abode is in Ayrshire.

The burial register of the Glasgow Necropolis records the burial of John Blacklock aged 64 on 26th August 1846. He was buried in 2nd Iota which denotes a common grave with no headstone.