BATHING TRAGEDIES

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 29 September 1933, Page 7

BATHING TRAGEDIES

GALLANT FATHER’S FAT!

I TRYING TO SAVE SON. j On a holiday visit to Oxfordshire | recently, Mr Arthur Stokes, aged 60, a. ningistrait'e- and retlro-d- -fa.rnveT from Northamptonshire, lost hi-s life by drowning at Twyford Mill, .near Bauburv, in trying to save- his married son, after first rescuing his dnugbte.r-in-Ltw. The son’s wife got into difficulties in a pond l , and' her husband, Air John Wallace Stokes-, aged 35, also a farmer, went to her assistance. Ho could not swim, and disappeared. Air Stokes, senior, jumped info- the water and succeeded in saving his daughter-in-law, and itheir went in search of his son. He got into difficulties, however, and both were drowned. Farm hand® and- others ran to the see net, and Airs Stokes was taken to the mill, where -she and' her husband lived. Air Stokes, -senior, leave® a wife-, and his son a wife and family. A largo crowd cheered' a boy of 12, Fred Snarey, of Castle, Hill', Reading, who, having learnt to swim only a month previously, dived into the river Fenne-t and rescued Ernest Charles, agf>d six. who had fallen in while fishing. Charles had sunk -twice when Fred, who lives in- -the same- house,

reached him. A policeman took the boy® home- in an ambulance, and, as -their mothers, were out. put them to- bed 1 . Gwyneth James, aged 23, and Peggy Ashton, aged 15, of Llanharan, Glamorgan, were drowned while bathing at Satndv Bav, Port-hcawl. They were members of a Sunday school party who had gone to the seaside for the annual •outing, and were playing with a largo ball in the. sea near the Black Rock, around which there are dangerous currents. A coastguard who noticed the two girls shouted a warning through a megaphone, b-ut apparently they did not hear him. They got into- difficulties and three young men succeeded- in bringing them ashore, where- artificial respiration -was applied for over an hour and a-half without success. Alias James was to- have been married next month. Her fiancee arrived on the scene soon aiftor the accident.