DREADFUL DEATH OF A BOY AT BENDIGO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume X, Issue 2795, 13 January 1873, Page 3

DREADFUL DEATH OF A BOY AT BENDIGO.

PAHTFUI. CHAPTEK OP ACCIDENTS. The Bendigo Advertiser gives the following particulars of the death of a lad named Joseph Hill, who was killed on Mr. George Lansell's Thanet Claim, Flora Beef, Back Creek. Mr. Lausell is well known to the old New Zealand diggers who rushed Otago in 1861-2. It was about half-past three in the afternoon the boy was standing at one of the levels, about to ascend to the surface in the cage, his day's work having been finished. He stepped upon a plank, and was in the act of mounting the skip, when he unfortunately missed his footing, and fell to the bottom of the shaft, a distance of nearly 120 feet. "When found he was quite insensible, his bead and breast being shattered by the violence of the fall. Life was not extinct, but he only survived a few minutes, and expired before he was raised to the surface. The body was conveyed to the reeidence of the parents of the deceased, which was near the cricket ground, not far from the scene of the accident. The deceased, who was about seventeen years of age," has been engaged in this claim for some months filling buckets, and was generally looked upon as competent to perform the duties allotted to him. He was the son of poor and respectable parents, and was the eldest of several industrious and hard-working sons who maintain their parents, and to the family he will be a great loss. Since he began to work he Las been singularly unfortunate; accidents seem to have befallen him at every turn of life. Whilst working at r» brick-ynrd in Baok Creek he met with two serious accidents ; once whilst wheeling a barrowful of clay along a plank the wheel ran off the board, and both he and the barrow fell into the excavation, aud on that occasion he was all but killed. At another time he was standing under a clay wall, shovelling dirt, when the embankment suddenlj caved in, and the poor little fellowwas buried beneath it, and narrowly escaped being crushed to death. After that he was run over by a horse and dray and had his leg broken ; and during his connection with Mr. Lansell's mine it ia said that be has had several narrow escapes, and met with accidents, though of minor consequence.