Prank Ends in Death

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22391, 11 April 1936, Page 13 (Supplement)

Prank Ends in Death

"It does seem as if he did it for pure devilment," remarked the coroner when summing up at the inquest at North Mimms, Hertfordshire, on Harold Kmalley, aged 19, a Cambridge undergraduate, who was found dead on the railway after climbing out of his compartment in a train. Smalley, whose home was at Crowhorough, Sussex, was in his second year at St. Catharine's College, and was secretary of Cambridge University Gymnastic Club. Lewis Wliitcornb Harding, an undergraduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, with whom Smalley had travelled to London, told the coroner they caught Lhe 9.55 p.m. tr.nin back to Cambridge. Soon after the train left London Smalley climbed out of the compartment. "Ho opened the window and shut it behind him," Harding continued. "He was away two or three minutes. When he came back I told him to be careful.

"Later I was away from the compartment for four or five minutes, and when T returned Smalley was not there. Both doors were closed. I looked out of the window on one side, and could not see bim. At the next stop I put my head out of the window and shouted. Someone put his head out of the window further down the train." Harding added that on arrival at Cambridge he waited at the station in the hope of seeing Smalley. Finally he went homo, thinking Smalley was playing a joke. John Askell Smalley, a civil engineer, of Radlett, told the coroner that it was consistent with his brother's highspiritedness for him to climb out of the train while it was moving.

The coroner pointed out that there was nothing to show that anyone else was implicated, and the jury, without retiring, returned a verdict of "Death by misadventure."