ENTOMBED IN A WELL

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume L, Issue 8930, 23 November 1905, Page 7

ENTOMBED IN A WELL

Although buried under a mass of earth and stones at the bottom of a well for nearlf twenty-four hours at Birr, King's County, Ireland, a pump borer named John l3ixon was Tescued little the worse for his experience. Dixon, who is about sixty years of age, was working at the bottom of the well, which is 47ft deep, when the stone lining of the sides collapsed. It was feared that he had been crushed to death', but a rescue party set to work, and eventually found that some planking at the bottom of the well had protected him from the weight of the stones and soil above him.

Interviewed, Dixon said that when the. sensation of the closing of the well abound his head, which might have slightly stunned him, had passed away, he- could hear the people on the surface of the ground. Soon he could near the digging commenced, and he was buoyed with hope as long as they continued. When they left off at nightfall he did not know the cause, and concluded he was abandoned, and that he was face to face with a slow but certain death. He hoped he would never have to undergo such an ordeal again as he experienced during the long silent night that seemed to him like an eternity. He dozed off asleep two or three times, and then heard the operations resumed. Hope grew brighter and brighter as they came nearer, and at length he was able to make known that he was alive. This is the second escape from death that Mr Dixon has experienced within a ahorfc time, as not long since he was just falling down a 70ft deep well when he managed to save himself by his outstretched arms catching on the top of the well.