A HUSBAND carried out a threat to hang himself when his wife left him, an inquest heard.

James Croasdale, 32, had told wife Christine several times he would commit suicide if she left.

After a holiday where the couple had constantly rowed, she left him and when she returned to their home in Ashleigh Street, Darwen, to collect some items, she found him hanged from the loft.

A typed note from the father of one was found near his body and it asked for the record, Seasons in the Sun, to be played at his funeral service.

It also read: "By the time you get this note I'll be free. Sorry for hurting you.

"No hard feelings. Good night. God bless."

Just a few weeks earlier one of Mr Croasdale's work colleagues had been found hanged, the Blackburn inquest was told.

He had told his wife it would be "easy and quick" to do the same.

Mrs Croasdale told police in a statement that her husband was violent, and once hit her, following a row over her chip shop business.

When she returned to the house, she found him dead, with a blue knotted bed sheet tied to a crow bar which had been put across the entrance to the loft.

Mr Croasdale's father, Richard, of Blackburn, said: "He had never threatened suicide in front of me.

"You think when someone says something like that it's just a silly threat. I never expected him to do that."

Deputy coroner Michael Singleton recorded a verdict of suicide.

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