DEATH IN TANNERY

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 October 1932, Page 12

DEATH IN TANNERY

REMARKABLE EXPLANATION SYDNEY, October 18. Recently a boy named Corrick, 17 years of age, employed at a Botany tanyard, failed to come home from his work. Search was eventually made at the tannery, and his body was found inside a large drum containing about a. ton weight of half-dressed hides. The drum which is about Bft. by 4ft., revolves by machinery, and the boy had been badly injured by the heavy skins as thej r moved slowly round within the drum. This drum was being used for a piece of experimental work, and the employees had been forbidden to touch it. The boy’s duty after. 6 o’clock when he was last seen alive, was to clean out another drum, close at hand, and the drum in which he was found was then at rest. It was found revolving by the night watchman at 8 p.m., and he stopped it, but did not see the boy’s body, which was concealed by the hides. The question to answer is how the boy came to be in the drum. He could not well get into it while it was revolving, and the machinery which set it in motion could only have .been started from outside, there being a special safety device to prevent accidental starting. For these reasons an attempt was made to account toi the tragedy by foul play. The idea was that some one hit him on the heat (which was badly wounded), threw him into the drum, and started it revolving. But the absence of any motive was a stumbling block, and the police are inclined to think that the poor boy’s end was purely accidental. They think that the boy, who took a keen interest in his work, had investigated the drum, and that he put his head inside to see how the skins were getting on. Then apparently he tried to draw some water out of it b> ing out a bung, and to let the watei flow he started the drum revolving, so as to bring the bung hole round, it he then put his head in U> see how things were going, he might easily have been knocked out by-Die weight of the revolving hides, and " conscious into the dium The only objection to this theoryin default of a better —is that C ol ’™* had nothing to do with the drum, and had been forbidden to touch it But this would matter little o an entev prising youth, interested inhis trade —and for the time being this seems to be the most, feasible explanation of this tragic mishap. ~