PLAYTIME TRAGEDY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 6 January 1923, Page 4

PLAYTIME TRAGEDY.

a BOY SMOTHERED.IN SAND. A boyish "adventure at the home' of John, Ap.ted Gaugham, aged' 10, of I Brighton Avenue, Bondi, hau a tragic ! ending, says a Sydney paper. ! John, with his brother Arthur, and! a friend, Leslie Lamb, aged 0, were playing^ a game of treasure-hunters in ! the backyard. With toy spades they! had dug a hole, scarcely four feet1 deep, and John stood in the hole, passing the sand up to his playmates in' tin buckets, as they had seen done by ; workers on the city railway. Lamb, : who had been sitting on the fence, ] looking on, jumped down near the edge I of the hole. Abruptly the sides caved I in on young Gaugham, and he was I completely buried in !the deluge of I sand. Terrified, the other two boys rushed across the street and called Mr. Rob- ' son, who lives opposite, to their assist- j ance. Mr. Robson and other neigh-1 hours dashed across and dug frenziedly ' tor the boy. After ten minutes ot breathless work John was found on one side of the hole, and fully eight j feet down—just double the depth of the treasure-seekers' holes. He was ' unconscious, and Dr. Wood, of Bondi, i was called. Artificial respiration was applied, but failed, and the doctor was forced to announce that the boy was dead. j The tragedy is not difficult to account for. Brighton Avenue and the ' immediate neighbourhood is all built-j up ground at the north end of Bondi, and residents declare that quantities of rubbish have been buried under the ' sand. This results m the formation) of sump-holes, and it must have been > over a sump-hole ' that the young treasure-seekers unconsciously selected the site for their game. I The Gaugham's yard is about- 25ft. ' by 30ft. in extent, precisely like a score of neighbouring, ones. Every one of these • may harbour similar deathtraps just below the surface. Indeed, a somewhat similar accident occurred recently at the home of a- neighbour on the opposite side of the street. The children had dug a small-hole] and to tease them their father jumped into it. There was no more startled man than he when his feet sank through the bottom, and he was engulfed to his armpits.