BOY’S DEATH AT AUCKLAND

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24545, 19 April 1945, Page 6

BOY’S DEATH AT AUCKLAND

—+■ \ ELECTRIC SHOCK IN HOME CORONER’S COMMENT (P.A,) AUCKLAND, April 18. “Similar Infant deaths will occur so long as the ■ sale use of electrical apparatus in homes Is not understood,* said the Coroner, Mr A. Addison, at an Inquest on a three-year-old boy, James Knight, a son.of Mr W. T. Knight, of Ponsonby, who i was killed on March 18 through touching an electric sewing machine. Evidence showed that the boys mother was using the machine, which was on a table, aha connected to an electric lamp socket by a two core flex. The boy was sitting on a form, apparently with ms foot or leg In contact with a gas pipe, and when he touched the machine he collapsed and died soon afterward. A subsequent investigation showed that we circuit supplying the light attached to the machine had gone to earth. According to the medical evidence the boy was suffering from status lymphattcus,' which made him unduly susceptible to sudden shock. “I 2m satisfied that this little lad recetved an electric shock sufficient to kill a normal Individual, and that It was the shock, which caused his death, said the Coroner. “I would like to make It abundahtiy clear that not the slightest atomof responsibility 18 to be set against the Bereaved mother. She. like thousands of householders, was using an electrical appliance In what she was entitled to consider a normal way." Mr Addison,said that what the public did not know was tbit immediately an apparatus was connected with a lamp socket by a twopin adaptor and a two-core flex, a potential first-class menace was Installed In the home by some means or other. “Unfortunately a sense of false security Is often induced by the ready and Indiscriminate sale of fittings, and. Indeed, apparatus fitted with a handy, though dangerous and obsolete two-pin adaptor and twoeore flex,"'continued Mr Addison. "Expert evidence shoWs that the safest connexion Is by a three-point non-reverslble adaptor, and three-core flex. I hope the public may soon be brought to realise this.” The Coroner returned a verdict that the cause of death was electric shock superimposed on status lymphatlcus.