Accidents and Fatalities.

Hastings Standard, Issue 424, 13 September 1897, Page 2

Accidents and Fatalities.

[By Telegraph.] (Per Press Association.) Greymouth, This day. A -winch gave way on board the steamer Richmond this morning while unloading, and a package falling on Alexander Chase inflicted serious injuries, botli his legs being broken and his head and body badly crushed. He was taken to the hospital.

A singular death has been reported to the Bolton borough coroner. A boy named Ilibbert was returning home with the supper beer when he fell. The broken edge of the jug caught his throat, causing a serious wound, from which the loss of blood was so great that he died in a short time.

The Wyndham Farmer reports that an extraordinary gun accident befell Mr B. W. Ballantyne, cheesemaker at Glenham Dairy Factory, last Friday evening. It appears that the barrel of a Remington rifle that he owned had got a bullet stuck in it, and by way of getting rid of it he put some powder into the cartridge chamber, and then placed the gun over the kitchen fire, in order to have the bullet dislodged by the force of the explosion. Having done that, Ballantyne went out of the house, and was talking to Mr J. A. Greer, of Wyndham ; and while thus engaged they heard not one, but two distinct discharges from the Remington. On returning to the house, Ballantyne seized hold of the gun by the muzzle, but as may be imagined it was so hot that he quickly let the stock end fail on the floor, and no sooner had he done so than a third discharge occurred, when a bullet was shot into tjie palm of the hand with which he was still grasping the muzzle. Ballantyne rode into Wyndham for surgical advice, the pain in the wound meanwhile being considerably aggravated owing to the hot bullet burning the flesh. Drs Btookwell and Rogers were called in, and advised the patient to be chloroformed and submit to an operation, but he declined to undergo the treatment, and returned home with the pellet still embedded |in his hand. Ballantyne recently was pig-shooting with the gun, when three or probablymore bullets had somehow or other got lodged in the barrel; hence his experiment and its painful sequel on Fntey last.