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EXTRAORDINARY INCIDENT

I) MATH BY M 1 HAD V ENT UK 11. Hooking a fish the other day in the Taunton Canal caused such excitement to a man of sixty-four (who had a diseased heart) that ho was found later, with a fish on the end of his line, in a state of collapse upon ike bank. Within less than a fortnight, in the year IPOI, we read of two persons meeting their death as the result of a sudden excitement, one in a direct and the other in a curiously indirect number. The first Dixon Crosby, a Sunderland shipwright, whilst a fit of immoderate laughter still shook him in looking over a comic journal, fell back dead with failure of the heart. The other tragedy was the result of a fright, when a servant at Btreatham bit the tea-tray against the door, causing her mistress to start as she was undressing her four-teen-weeks-old baby. A small safetypin fell into the child’s mouth, which it swallowed and soon after died.

In October of the next year a certain Miss Nieholls of Launceston died through, overjoy, when her local surgeon Enabled her to walk for the first time since her infancy.

Other strange deaths in circumstances the most unexpected are reported every now and then. There was the tragedy of Mr William Oakes in 1920, the Hartlepool sportsman, who lost his life simply through being tall. He was (sft Bin in height, and calling at an hotel one day on business, he struck his head against the top of the door-frame, and falling backwards fractured his spine. There was the extraordinary death of Joseph Micoulas in 19(12, who was suffocated in a. heap of gold. A young refiner, he was at work in a laboratory when he was seized with an epileptic lit. His head fell forward into a basin of gold dust, which entered his nostrils and suffocated him.

Probably there are few deaths more awful to contemplate than that of slow suction. One does occasionally hear of such a tragedy as that of Mrs Pnderwood, a visitor to Blackpool, who, when wading near the Victoria Pier, stuck fast in the clay as it oozed out from the promenade expulsion works, and dually sank tj> her death & But the death of a lad, dames Kllison, at I'lvors! on, is a record mercifully unhpie.

'i’his hoy with three others went to hat he in a tank on the roof of the paper mill when' they worked. Ellison was a swimmer, and sat down on the pipe which supplies the mill with water. Jt as a ten-feet suction pipe by which the boilers were fed, and the suction was so great that he was unable to rise again. Neither could his mates release him, and before further assistance could be brought the water rose above his head, and ho died within an inch or two of air and life.

But what follow’s makes perhaps the most terrible reading of all. It was reported in October, 1902, from Cleveland. Ohio. A. leading resident of that city believed that he had swallowed his set of false teeth while asleep at night, and an X-ray examination revealed, as the surgeons declared, tin- teeth in the esophagus. A most dangerous operation was at once performed. Just as the esophagus

had been cut open to its entire jlength, a anember of the family rushed into the operating-room, carrying the missing teeth. They had been found -under the bed. Subsequent inquiry showed that the victim had been suffering from acute laryngitis, so that the pain in his throat led him to conclude he had swallowed the teeth. The next day he died from the operation.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NA19280524.2.99

Bibliographic details

Northern Advocate, 24 May 1928, Page 9

Word Count
617

EXTRAORDINARY INCIDENT Northern Advocate, 24 May 1928, Page 9

EXTRAORDINARY INCIDENT Northern Advocate, 24 May 1928, Page 9