CHILD'S LIFE LOST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23272, 15 February 1939, Page 14

CHILD'S LIFE LOST

TREATMENT TOO LATE BODY FOUND IN STREAM ALLEGATIONS BY FATHER [BY TELEGRAJPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION] WELLINGTON, Tuesday An allegation that two doctors had declined to come when he called them was made at an inquest at Lower Hutt to-daj' by tho father of Beverley Irene Allison, aged two years and eight months, whose body was found in the Waiwhetu Stream, near Rossiter Avenue, on Friday afternoon. Evidence was given that the child had wandered from tho house of her grandmother and on a search being made her body was found in the stream. Tho grandmother tried to resuscitate the child, as also did Dr. R. A. Bakewell, who arrived half an hour after the finding of the body. Tho coroner, Mr. E. Gilbertson, said tho case was one where a knowledge of resuscitation was most important. What the grandmother had done was correct as far as it went, but he was of opinion that the life of the child could have been saved if someone with a full knowledge of life-saving methods had been present. The father of tho child asked the coroner if it was not compulsory for medical men if they were at their surgeries to attend cases when called. Ho had called two doctors, who had refused to come. Hence the late arrival of Dr. Bakewell. The coroner said there was no compulsion, but he supposed the doctors in question had engagements. The finding was that the child was accidently drowned by falling into tho Waiwhetu Stream.