Blackburn businessman hanged himself while on holiday (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Blackburn businessman hanged himself while on holiday

4:00pm Thursday 15th November 2012 in Blackburn By Dan Clough, Reporter

THE wife of a man found hanged while on holiday in Spain told an inquest he was prone to short bouts of suicidal depression.

Blackburn businessman Graham Brookman, 64, of Pleasington Lane, was discovered on the last day of a five-week holiday at the Playa Montroig campsite in Tarragona in August.

At Blackburn Coroner’s Court yesterday, coroner Michael Singleton concluded Mr Brookman had committed suicide by hanging on August 25.

Officials in Spain said Mr Brookman, the company director of Chorley-based Parkinson Bailiff Services Limited, had hanged himself using an electrical appliance cord between 6.30am and 7am.

Mr Brookman’s wife, Pauline, told the inquest her husband had talked openly about suicide before.

Mr Singleton asked: “During the five-week holiday, had there been any incidents or expressions?”

Mrs Brookman replied: “No. It was the best holiday we had ever had.

“On the last evening everything was fine. Graham was playing with a hosepipe and squirting everyone.

“We went out for a meal and he was telling jokes.”

Mrs Brookman said her children had wanted to sleep on the beach, so they had moved their beds out of the caravan they were staying in.

Because it was heavy, she had left her husband’s inside.

She saod: “He thought we had left him out. He went into a very dark state as if he was being rejected."

When things had calmed down, Mrs Brookman said she had gone looking for her husband.

She told the inquest: “Apparently he had been back to the caravan and told our daughter he was going to hang himself, but she didn’t believe him as he had said it before.”