STRANGE DEATH

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 13, 17 January 1933, Page 7

STRANGE DEATH

DUE TO BARREL-ORGAN

Johann Baab, a youthful Vienna mechanic, met his death in unusual circumstances, which for nearly a week remained unexplained.

Eaab had engaged himself to repair the barrel-organ of an aged mendicant. Of old and complicated design, the instrument had for 21 days resisted the young mechanic's efforts to ease the tightly wound spring and so set the mechanism in motion. Eventually, while Eaab was again sitting bowed over the ancient instrument, the spring was all at once heard to unwind with lightning speed, and in ' the next moment the mechanic was seen to fall forward and expire. As Eaab was known to possess a weak heart, his parents were disposed to assume heart failure as the cause of death, the more so as no wound was visible on any part of his body. A closer examination, however, revealed a tiny spot above the youth's heart, which, when X-rayed, betrayed the presence of a minute piece of metal. It was a fragment of a cog-wheel, which had been broken off by the rapid unwinding of the jammed spring, had shot out of the box, and, passing through waistcoat and shirt of the youth, had found its way into his heart.