A BROKEN NECK.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 13071, 10 May 1913, Page 9

A BROKEN NECK.

LONDON, March 26. A remarkable case has come to light where a woman broke her neck once and uved for eight months. Then broke it again and died at once. At Battersea, Mr tJ. Ingleby Oddie held an inquest on the body of Annie Elley, 63, wife of a gas purifier, of Ceyion street, Battersea. The husband stated that m Juno last his wife fell down, a few stairs and broke her neck, She was taken to St. .Thomas' Hospital, where she was operated upon by Mr Sargeant and supplied with a kind of stiff collar, which she only wore for six weeks. Stanley Elley, a son, stated that on Friday night he found his mother with her head firmly fixed between a chaii and bedstead and the wall m the kitchen. She had apparently fallen over backwards, and was dead. Mr Robert S. Trevor, who made an autopsy, deposed that portions of the second, third and part of tho fourth cervical vertebrae had been removed by the operation. Tho operation was extraordinarily successful and very bold. The neck was broken at a part where a fracture was usually fatal. Death was due to suffocation caused by pressure of the face on the front of the body, the result of the head beinsr bent forward. Any sharp blow on the back of the neck would have proved fatal to the woman. „ „ , ' . The jury returned a verdict of Accidental death."