BROTHERS' DEATHS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1938, Page 9

BROTHERS' DEATHS.

Manslaughter Charge Against

Chemist.

OPERATION IN SYDNEY.

SYDNEY, May 27.

The coroner concluded an inquiry today into the deaths of two brothers, James Kdward Cobban, aged 15, and James Cobban, aged 13, in a private hospital in Burwood on May 10 and May 11 respectively.

The verdict was that the deaths were due to the effects of a deadly drug known as paraldehyde, administered to an excessive amount and "due to the negligent preparation of medical prescriptions by Walter Peck, chemist and dispenser, of the Burwood friendly societies' dispensar\'."

Peck was committed for trial on a charge of manslaughter.

Becoming ill after taking medicine as a preliminary to an operation for the removal of their tonsils, the boye did not recover, and doctors' efforts to 6ave their lives proved vain.

The boys had been admitted to the private hospital after a doctor had decided that their tonsils should be removed. The parents were Riven a prescription, containing paraldehyde, by a doctor, and had it made up by a chemist. Immediately after the boys were given the medicine by a nurse at the hospital they both became ill, and the elder boy died, the younger lapsing into a coma from which ■he could not be revived.