CASUALTIES

Otago Witness, Issue 2812, 5 February 1908, Page 33

CASUALTIES

A verdict of wilful suicide was returned l>y the coroner's jury on the 21st in the case of Joseph Breese, porter, whose body was found on the beach in St. Heliers IBay, a I-000l seaside resort. A tin Of cyanide of potassium was found beside the corpse. Chemical examination showed that this poison was the cause of death. Mr Erneet Coppell, partner in a cash and door factory company at Takaka, was attempting to adjust the nut of a bandsaw ■when the spanner clipped and his right ■wrist was struck by the saw and nearly severed. It is hoped to save the hand, but Mr Coppell will be disabled for eight months. An old woman named Elizabeth Tuffnel, «. widow, 60 years of age, was found dead in her house at Pafnell on January 22 in circumstances pointing to suicide. She lived alone, and not having been seen for several day* her daughter paid a visit to the house to-night and found the body of the old woman lying in the passage with her throat Cut and a pair of scissors in a pool of blood close by. i Albert Julian, aged six and a-half years, the 6on of a billiard-marker, went for a bathe in the Waikato River. He stepped from the shore into 12ft of water and was drowned. Another boy - of ' the same age declined to enter the water. A sad feature of the event is that the boy's mother is in , the hospital with typhoid fever. At Okahune on January 22 Mr W. A. Floyd, an inspector on the Main Trunk line for fche last 10 years, was killed at the railway station. He was knocked over by a train and cut in two. A child 10 months old, the daughter of Christopher Gallagher, Coromandel street, was found drowned in a bath at its parents' residence on Tinnary 22. There was only Sin of water n the bath. Gardener Hunter, of Waimea "West, a very old settler in the district, died suddenly to-day. The captain of the Eippingham Grange, which arrived on January 23 from i Liverpool, via Capetown, reports that during the voyage a steerage passenger named William Monk, aged 22 years, who had been suffering from consumption, committed suicide by shooting himself. A young man ramed John Clarke, 23 years of age, was drowned while bathing at Lyell Bay, Maramar, on January i 23._ He is not known to have had relatives in New Zealand An inquest was held and a verdict of " Found drowned " returned A young man hamd Henry Angel has been drowned at Brunner. The body was ireoovered. A man named Thomas Hickey, aged 70 years, was admitted into the Dunedin Hospital on Saturday night from Hyde, suffering from rather a bad fracture of the right leg dose to the hip joint. It appears that the man was seated on the top of a cart-load of wood, and going down a hill part of the harneaa broke, and the horse increasing its speed, Hickey waa thrown off and sustained the injury mentioned. Thomas Taylor, aged 68, a settler residing at Te Papa, Auckland, was loading graia on the 3rd, when he fell and expired almost immediately. He is_ believed to hav-j suffered from heart affection. Milford Gray, aged 23, received a sunstroke an the Bluff on the 3rd. He was sent to the hospital. Charles Knopp, aged 19, an attendant at Wixth'e Circus, had his foot injured by a track passing ov«r it on the 3rd. He is in the Invercargill hospital. \