Note: The family used both Vignoles and De Vignoles. Samuel seems to have preferred the former. The surname was also often spelled Vignolles.

Samuel Vignoles visited his old friend Henry Duigan – a clerk in the Audit Office – in Melbourne in July 1857. He stayed for two days and Duigan later recalled that he had noticed a great change in Samuel’s appearance and manner. Samuel then stayed for a few days with John Moore, the Under Secretary in the Colonial Secretary’s Department. Samuel had a “slight fit” and was described as “eccentric” for several days. He then became distraught and escaped from Moore’s house, vowing to find the murderers of his son, Wellesley Arthur de Vignoles, who had died in Ireland in 1853 at the age of 15. When he was caught, he was violent and unmanageable and had to be restrained. His friends took him to a private asylum in Pascoe Vale, run by James Thomas Harcourt. Samuel escaped about two weeks later determined to go to Kilmore. Pursued by two of the warders, he entered a waterhole near the asylum and, despite the efforts of the warders and a local labourer, drowned. An inquest held the following day found that his drowning on 28 August 1857 was accidental due to an unsound mind [01].

Vignoles was buried at Melbourne General Cemetery on 25 October 1857 [02].

Vignoles was replaced as Police Magistrate at Kilmore by Andrew Murison McCrae. Vignoles was probably relieved of his duties when committed to the asylum. The Kilmore Free Press of 21 August 1857 (referred to in a 1914 article) reports McCrae’s appointment [03], but the official order in the Victoria Government Gazette is dated 15 September 1857 [04].