TRAM ACCIDENTS.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 1272, 29 December 1903, Page 2

TRAM ACCIDENTS.

FATALITIES AT AUCKLAND AND DTJNEDIti. Two electric trams collided at Eden Terrace at 8 p.m. on Christmas eve. They were crowded with passengers, and it is estimated that 100 were injured more or less. The following were killed:—Miss Ann Young Hogarth, a resident of Mount Eden, aged 23 ; her neck was broken. Benjamin Lindsay, of Kingsland, aged 65. William Caley, accountant, of Rocknynook. Tho following were dangerously injured:—Miss Hill of Kingsland, an infant named Blundell, whose parents reside at Morningside, concussion; Joseph James Camplen, of Mount Roskill, a scalp wound and collarbone broken, seriously injured ; Stanley Andrew, of View Roud, scalp wound. One or more Wanganui visitors named Clark were slightly injured. The ace dent was between a double deck and a combination car. The top-deck car started out and reached a loop about threequarters of a mile from the Kingsland terminus, when something went wrong with the brakes, and the car commenced backing. It gathered momentum as it went, until, when running down an incline at a rate of from 30 to 40 miles an hour and rounding a bend, it dashed at great spaed into an upcoming combination car, smashing the front into an unrecognisable mass and sustaining serious damage itself. The trolly-pole came off the line while the car was running, and, swinging round like a flail among the passengers, struck Miss Hogarth, killing her instantaneously. An elderly man, Benjamin Lindsay, was jammed between the cars. Both his l"gs were broken, and he died subsequently. William Caley died this morning. Mrs Alfred Caley, Miss Hill and a little girl named Blundell are not expected to recover. Two accidents of a minor character occurred to the Electric Trams at Dunedin, and J. A. Richardson, a conductor, struck against a post carrying the wires on Saturday, and Fred Olsen, ano'her conductor, fell from a car, but both escaped serious injury, and George Auld, an old-age pensioner and a married man fell when stepping off a horse car in Dunedin and subsequently died of his injuries.