Go home, Jim, youre drunk, Police Constable Ring told his old buddy Jim Coleman, who was making a nuisance of himself in a street in Glenelg, South Australia. Coleman slouched off, but not to sober up. Instead he took down his hunting gun and went in search of the officer. He was still, in his own words, mad with drink when he shot the policeman dead.
Coleman was hanged on Thursday, July 2nd, 1908, in Adelaide Prison. He went cheerfully to the scaffold. I retain my belief in God, he said, seconds before the hangman sprang the trap.