DEATH DRAMA.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

DEATH DRAMA.

TWO GIRLS IN CANAL. "SLAPPED" FOR STAYING OUT LATE. WRONG SORT OF DISCIPLINE.

They had been to the theatre, and they came home late. Their parents reprimanded them, and they went out again the following morning, not to work, but to die. Hand-in-hand they raced to a canal bank and sacrificed their young lives. One was sixteen, the other fourteen. This is the tragedy of two girls, bright, pretty mill-lasses, who, because of a sudden temperamental heartache, brought swift despair to two homes and plunged into oblivion before, as the coroner said, "they had had time to know the joys and pleasures of existence." It was a sad, pitiable tale that was told at Little Lever, near the Manchester, Bury and Bolton Canal, when the coroner and a jury inquired into the deaths of Sarah Ellen Middleton (16) and Sophia Barnes (14), whose parents lived in the same house at Canal Row, Nob End. The girls were close friends, and worked side by side at Messrs. T. Nuttalls, Oak Mill, Farnworth. Their dinner parcels were found on the canal bank, and their bodies taken from the water a few feet away. The mother of the younger girl sobbingly told the coroner that her daughter got up at her usual time, 6.15, on the morning of the tragedy, and sat at table with her friend, Sarah, having breakfast. Mrs. Barnes said she heard Mr. Middleton speaking to his daughter, and saw him slap her once on the face. The Coroner (Mr. S. F. Butcher): Were you also angry?— Yes, sir. The Coroner: Because your daughter had stayed out late the previous night in company with Miss Middleton? Did you go and slap her face?— Yes, sir, with the palm of my right hand. Did she speak?—No; Bhe didn't seem to be sulky. Mrs. Barnes added that about 7 a.m. Sophia left home for work. The Coroner: Have you ever heard her threaten to do any harm to herself? —No, never once. The Coroner: Don't you think it is a bit early in the morning to strike anyone? People are not quite out of bed then, you know. Do you think it is a wise thing to do? Witness: Well, we were just a bit excited. The Coroner: You shouldn't be excited first thing in the morning unless you are half asleep. I know children want checking, but it is not the height of wisdom to smack them going to work in the morning. You must remember they are going out to work for you as well as themselves. Father's Collapse. The father of the other girl, William Middleton, an unemployed miner, told how he slapped his daughter, and a few minutes later she left for work with her friend. She seemed sulky. He- saw the girls crossing a field near the canal. An hour later he saw them still in the field. Mr. Middleton said he called to his daughter to go to work, but the girls clasped hands and ran away in the other direction. When he went to look for them he found their dinners on the canal side, and saw his daughter's coat floating on the water. "I collapsed at first," he said, "and then ran for help."

The Coroner: What time did your daughter come in the night before?— About ten o'clock. She was in bed when I got home. I had been to the pictures. "Yes, and she might have been to the pictures?" "She had been to the theatre. I told her to get home by 0.30." The Coroner: Why didn't you get home by 9.30?—1t was 9.30 when the pictures came out. Referring to witness' chastisement of his daughter the following morning, the coroner asked: Do you think that a reasonable thing to do first thing in the morning?—l didn't hit her hard, sir. That doesn't matter. There is a right time and a wrong time to speak to children. The story of-the recovery of the bodies from the water was given by Fred Ainsworth, a canal dredgeman, of Seddon Street, Little Lever. He told how the girls appeared to be clinging together in death—their bands clasped. The coroner told the jury that ibey could return their verdict in their own way, but they must remember it must not be a sentimental verdict, but one according to the facts as proved before them. If these two girls threw themselves iulo the water intending to destroy themselves it was suicide. If they put their heads together and determined to drown themselves each murdered the other. The jury found there was no evidence of conspiracy, tnd recorded a verdict of "Suicide while temporarily of unsound mind" in each case. Commenting on the tragedy, the coroner remarked, "To-day, suicide is becoming extraordinarily prevalent; quite out of proportion to what it was many years ago. I suppose economic conditions have something to do with it; social conditions may have something to do with it; religious difference may have something to do with i - , - , "There may be other causes combined, but what has been brought home very closely to me is that if this kind of thing is to be obviated we all have got to recognise more fully that we are our brothers keepers, and we have got some responsibility and a very real responsibility to make life more bearable to other people, and not only to make it more bearable, but to bring into it such joy and pleasure that folk will be loth to part with it. "I don't want to find fault with the parents of these two girls; probably according to their lights they did their best. But I can't help thinking their lights were very, very, dim. "They were good girls, sensitive girls evidently. They had not been in the habit of staying out late, and on this, the first when they had done so they were not only reprimanded overnight, but it started again in the morning, and the children were smacked. "Well, discipline is necessary to youth, added Mr. Butchers, "we haven't enough —of the right sort—but I can't help thinking it is the wrong sort when parents and children, who have just got out of bed and haven't got the crumbs out of the corners of their eyes, start going for one another and parents smack their children.