POISON MYSTERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22610, 29 June 1935, Page 24

POISON MYSTERY

.»» TRAGEDY ON WEDDING EVE DYING MAX WHO WOULD NOT TELL. " This is a most extraordinary case, and from certain points of view a most unsatisfactory one." declared the Camberivel! coroner when he held an inquest on Eric Thomas Msiddox, 29, a storekeeper, of Hill street. Peekham, who was to have been married that day. The mystery of his death remained unsolved and the coroner recorded an open verdict. His sweetheart, Miss Elizabeth Ridley, whose mother was Maddox's landlady, sobbed as she crave evidence. "We had been engaged two years, and were to have been married on Easter Sunday," she told the coroner. "We had made all the arrangements for the wedding." On April 5, she went on, her fiance came in, and she heard him go into the scullery. She went there a few minutes later and found him on the floor in terrible agony._ She could discover no sign of poison in the scullery. Coroner: Can you account for this at all?—I think he was short of money. I don't know exactly what he earned. Had he told you he was short of money, would you have been willing to wait?— Yes. Dr Henry Owen West, of St. Giles Hospital, gave evidence that death was due to poisoning. Maddox, from the time he was admitted until his death 11 days later, would not give any account of what had happened. The coroner recording an onen verdict, remarked that there was nothing to indicate from the girl's story that Maddox had not intended to complete his contract of marrTaore, but apparently no money had been Tound.