POWDER PUFF AND DEATH

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 August 1936, Page 2

POWDER PUFF AND DEATH

AVOMAN AVHO CUT CHIN.

LONDON, July 13. "

A husband suggested at a City of London inquest yesterday that a pow-der-puff might have caused infection which led to his wife’s death.

Leah Hammerson, 32, of Ilford, died from septicaemia in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. “I connect this with using a powder puff on the open wound,” he added. “A woman’s powder puff is seldom clean, and it must have been full of germs.”

The woman’s brother, Benjamin Levy, said that he went to see the coroner’s officer, as he and his father were a little uneasy about the cause of the trouble from which his sister died. They based that on certain correspondence received from her.

His sister had written saying that she had not been feeling well, but asked that she should not be visited. “What was her object in saying that her sister should not visit her?” he asked. “It. seems strange to us wh.v a perfectly normal and healthy girl should die this way.” Dr B. AV. Hayward, house physician at St. Bartholomew’s, said that death was due to heart failure following septicaemia, probably brought about by the cut on the chin. Following a communication from the dead woman’s brother, a post-mor-tem was made, and he found no sign of interference of any kind. Summing up, the coroner, Mr Danford Thomas, said: “I suppose most of the people in this case are of the Hebrew race, and I always find them extremely persistent in cases of this kind.

“They sometimes make an unecessary uproar about it, and that is why I am particularly anxious to go into all the circumstances.” A verdict of death from misadventure was recorded.