SIDESHOW ACCIDENT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17437, 8 April 1931, Page 7

SIDESHOW ACCIDENT

YOUNG WOMAN STABBED “INDIAN BASKET TRICK” “The girl who defies death” narrowly escaped being killed at tho Royal Agricultural Show in Sydney last week, when a sword, driven through tho basket in which she was locked, was thrust into her right side, narrowly missing vital organs. More than a thousand times in Australia and New Zealand Miss Kathleen Filmer, whose parents live at Paddington, Sydney, has been clamped down in a basket, through which a number of swords and bayonets are dexterously driven. On this occasion the sideshow was proceeding as usual. A knot of spectators watched the performance of what is known to stage magicians as the “Indian basket trick.” Sword after sword, bayonet after bayonet, were thrust through the basket, from which issued -the screams of the captive woman. Then the “professor” made the last sword thrust. It encountered some unwonted obstacle and he withdrew it. It was dripping with blood. Miss Filmer was hastily liberated and ambulance men rendered first aid and conveyed her to a hospital, where a deep and painful wound was dressed and stitched.

Miss Filmer, speaking later, was not dismaved, “Accidents will happen,” she said, “hut 1 have not lost m.v nerve. 1 will he ‘defying death’ again as soon as the doctor will allow me.