HOPELESS STRUGGLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 39, 15 August 1939, Page 18

HOPELESS STRUGGLE

NURSE AND PATIENT

DEATH FROM A TRAIN

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, August 3

William George Matthew Maher, 41, a farmer, who was being brought to a Sydney hospital for a nerv% complaint, dived through the window of a train after a desperate struggle with his nurse attendant and was.killed. Maher, on entering the train at Tamworth, was put to bed in a sleeping compartment, and Nurse Hewitt sat beside him throughout the journey. He was quiet during the night, according to Nurse. Hewitt. He raised himself at the stations to see the names, and during the early hours of the morning dropped off to sleep. Conductor Schrimmer, in charge of the sleeper, called round frequently to the compartment to see that Miss Hewitt and her patient were all right. Maher became restless at about 7 a.m. when the train was. about 30 miles from Sydney. Miss Hewitt tried to quieten him, buL when he refused to be pacified, she feared he might attempt something desperate. "Without letting Maher see what I was doing," she said, "I pressed the bell connected to the conductor's office. All the time I was trying to soothe Maher, and I was hoping I could keep him quiet until the conductor arrived. Schrimmer must have been attending to duties at the other end of the train and could not hear the bell.

"Suddenly Maher made a rush at the window, and in one action flung it wide open. I screamed for help, and grasped him by his pyjama coat, but he half wriggled out of it, and seemed to draw himslf through the window. He was a big man and I had no hope of holding him. The conductor then appeared, and although he made a grab ai Matter could not prevent him from falling."

Schrimmer pulled the communication cord and stopped the train. Running back along the line, the train crew found Maher's mutilated body. .