THE DROWNING CASE AT HAMILTON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9062, 24 May 1888, Page 5

THE DROWNING CASE AT HAMILTON.

THE INQUEST. [from our own correspondent.] Taupiri, Wednesday; An inquest was held yesterday on the remains of the late Mr. John Brown, storekeeper, of the Public Works Department, Auckland, before Coroner Searancke and a jury, of whom Mr. T. H. White was elected foreman. A voluminous mass of evidence was taken, from which it appears that deceased prior to the day on which he had been last seen alive had been drinking heavily, but on the latter occasion when seen in Victoria-street, Hamilton, by two of the witnesses about eleven o'clock in the forenoon of the 21st ultimo, was sober. Since then no one had seen him till the body was found in the Mara Marua Creek, near its junction with the Waikato River. The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the evidence, "That deceased had been found drowned, but that there was no evidence to show how the drowning had occurred." [by telegraph.— CORRESPONDENT.] Hamilton, Wednesday. A curious circumstance has been elicited since the inquest yesterday on Mr. Brown. It would seem, after all that he had not fallen off the railway bridge as supposed, but into the river on the Hamilton West side, close by the bridge, where there are a number of snags close into the bank. There were marks on the river bank, which is steep at the bridge site, of a man having half walked, half slipped, which were noticed at the time the man was missed, and a small dog, which ran up and down the bank, and would not leave it for hours, drew attention to these. Search, however, made at the time by Mr. Gelling, the Town Clerk, and others resulted in nothing, though an attempt was made to detach anything that might have caught in the snags. Last night, however, the children of Mr. Kirk, the Clerk of the Court here, who lives on the liver bank, below the railway bridge, told him that on Saturday last they saw what they supposed to be a grey coat floating down the river. As deceased had on a suit of grey tweed, it was probably his body that they saw, and at the inquest it was shown that the trousers the body had on were roughly torn over the thigh, as though by a snag. The probability is that before crossing the bridge,which he intended to do, to see some men on the other side who were unloading sleepers, he went part way down the river bank for some purpose, and slipping fell into the stream. 'Ihe body at the inquest was clearly identified by his subordinate, Mr. Moat, by the clothes, and by a knife and pencilcase in the pocket, and more distinctly by one of the toes, which had been broken some time ago.