ACCIDENTS AND FATALITIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 9151, 10 July 1890, Page 6

ACCIDENTS AND FATALITIES.

A DISASTROUS MISTAKE. [Per Press Association.] WELLINGTON, July 9. Mrs Bennett, residing near the Caledonian Hotel, died last night from the effect of a dose of strychnine, administered by mistake for morphia. Mr Fitz Gerald, the chemist who made the prescription up. says the poison must have been put into the bottle when filling it from the store. This was done by a former assistant, who has been telegraphed for to give evidence at the inquest. Three doctors attended Mrs Bennett, but’ were unable to save her life. INVERCARGILL. July 9. A flax-mill hand, named William George Skeggs, was drowned near Riverton while crossing the lagoon. The circumstances of the fatal boat accident at Stewart Island are peculiarly painful, the young men being relatives, and on their way to visit the mother of two of them at Neck. They were all members of the crew of the schooner Janet Ramsay. Neill’s mother resides at Henley, in the Taieri district. He was a youth of nineteen. George Joss was twenty-five. They seem to have recognised the necessity for caution, as they put the boat ashore and took in ballast, but got into a rip on opening out the bay with an easterly wind, and the boat filled.

At Temuka a young man named Henry Lavery, who is employed at the Temuka Flour Mills, had the misfortune to fall and break one of his legs just above the ankle, when he wa* engaged in a wrestling bout.