DROP DOWN LIFT WELL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 57, 9 March 1931, Page 5

DROP DOWN LIFT WELL.

ACCIDENT IN HOSPITAL

WOMAN PATIENT'S DEATH.

STOP BUTTON FAILS TO ACT.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

CHRISTCHURCH, this day.

Mrs. Ivy Esther Smith, aged 54, a patient in St. George's Hospital, was killed last evening through a lift accident while she was being moved from one ward to another.

Mrs. Smith, who is the wife of Mr. Sidney Smith, of Linwood, was being brought down in a bed from the top floor of the hospital, where she had attended a church service in the chapel. After the service her bed was wheeled on to the lift, which travelled to the floor on which her room was. As the bed was being wheeled from the lift by two sisters the cage suddenly started to move upward. The bed was half in and half out of the lift, and as the cage rose, the bed and the patient dropped down the lift well. The helpless woman, who fel 18 feet, was severely injured and died two hours later.

The sister at the foot of the bed inside the lift pressed the stop button as soon as the lift began to move, but the machinery did not respond.