STOPPED HIS INQUEST.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 267, 10 November 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

STOPPED HIS INQUEST.

"DEAD" MAN ..RACES HOME. . "I have just called to ■ tell you to stop this inquest' as I am not dead at all, and things might be awkward for me." In this l way John Cunningham, 54,. a stonemason, of Ash Grove, Liverpool, announced to the City Coroner that a body drawn from the Princess Dock West and identified as his was someone else's. Cunningham was on holiday at his sister's home in Belfast when she received a telegram saying he was dead. He took the first boat home,,.. and arrived just in time to stop the inquest on himself. ...

Message to Sister. Explaining the circumstances Cunning-! ham said the trouble, had arisen through his leaving home and not mentioning-his destination. "I did not feel very well," he said, "and left the house to see the. doctor, but I changed .my mind and went to my old home in Belfast. I had been there about a week when'my sister received a telegram from my landlady urging her to leave for Liverpool at once as I was dead." • Cunningham's 'landlady said when she heard of the dock tragedy she feared that it referred to Cunningham; and; on going to the mortuary she found the likeness between the men remarkable, and had no hesitation in saying the body was that of her lodger. ..'.,..