DEATH BY MISADVENTURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2714, 21 March 1906, Page 36

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE.

A CONSTABLE'S SAD DEATH. (Fboai Oue, Own , Cobeespondent.) GORE, March 13. A misadventure occurred at Mataura this morning resulting in the death of Constable Joseph Keaney. Keaney, after rising at 7 o'clock, applied a lotion of carbolic oil to an arm that was troubling him, and inadvertently took a teaspoonful by mistake for an internal medicine. He at once realised his mistake, and told his wife. A chemist was sent for, but the unfortunate man had collapsed, and it was found impossible to 'administer an antidote j owing to the jaws being locked. Keaney .succumbed in less than half an hour. He was well known in Mataura, where he has been police constable for 15 rears. He joined the force in 1881, and was 55 years of age. He leaves a family of five or six children, the majority infants.

There is a quiet movement afoot in Taranaki that is likely to spread to other districts, says the Eltham Argus. It is nothing less than a quiet boycott of certain wholesale firms by retail dealers. It appears that some wholesale firms send their travellers into country towns to do business with retailers. They book all the orders they can, and at the same time do a sort of semiwholesale, semi-retail trade with hotelkeepers, boardinß-housekeepers, etc. The retailers look upon this as poaching on their domains, and, without making any fuss or complaint, they will withdraw their patronage from those firms who do this duplicate class of trade, and reserve their orders for those establishments who confine their business to bona fide wholesale buyers whose business it is to retail. A " little list is being prepaied, and some wholesale house 3 will shortly begin to wonder why orders are falling off. They will cease to wonder if , they read this paragraph. j