NOT MY HUSBAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 246, 17 October 1922, Page 6

NOT MY HUSBAND.

IN WRONG COFFINS. WIFE'S DISCOVERY. iFroiu Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 12. The case at Newcastle last week in ! which two bodies were mixed up and placed in the wrong coffins, was the i ■second to have occurred in New South ■ Wales, there having been a similar case ] Ht a big Sydney hospital about a year ! ago. I The deaths of two men occurred in , Mie Newcastle Hospital, and the widow "f one of them was away when her hus- ' band died. As soon as she heard she j hurried to the htMpttal pud a-ked *o j have n look at the body before the coffin lid was closed. It is said that she had great difficulty in having her wish granted, but she was taken to where the coffin stood. The lid was lifted, and the : •-.idow peeped in. She started back: "It is not my husband!" she said. The ! nurse looked in also, and saw the bald , head of an elderly man who certainly was. not the widow's deceased husband. The coffin was the correct one, for the name-plate was attached. The staff inferred that the body had been placed j in another coffin, and that the body of ' another man who died about the same ' time, had been inadvertently exchanged.! By this time the other coffin had pone ■ to the residence of the other widow in , a far suburb. The only way out of the difficulty was to exchange the coffins nnd name-plates. The widow whose wish to see her husband was granted in Mich a peculiar way, was very ill. and in poor circumstances, the funeral expenses and the cost of her mourning having to be borne by a city business firm. It was found later that the mistake occurred through the bodies being misplaced on the mortuary slabs. Everything was adjusted before the funerals took place. — i