CORONER WARNS PARENTS

Southland Times, Issue 25652, 20 April 1945, Page 7

CORONER WARNS PARENTS

USE OF ELECTRICAL APPARATUS

(P.A.) AUCKLAND, April 19. “Similar infant deaths will occur so long as the safe uses of electrical apparatus in homes is not understood,” said the Coroner, Mr A. Addison, at the inquest on a three-year-old boy, James Knight, a. son of Mr W. T. Knight, of Ponsonby, who was electrocuted on March 18 as a result of touching an electric sewing machine. The evidence showed that the boy’s mother was using the machine, which was on a table and connected to an electric lamp socket by a two core flex. The boy was sitting on a form, apparently with a foot or leg in contact with a gas pipe, and when he. touched the machine he collapsed and died soon afterwards. A subsequent. investigation showed that the circuit supplying the light attached to the machine had “gone to earth.” According to the medical evidence the boy was suffering from status lymphaticus, which made him unduly susceptible to a sudden shock. “I am satisfied that this little lad received an electric shock sufficient to kill a normal individual, and that it was shock which caused his death,” said the Coroner. “I would like to make it abundantly clear that not the slightest atom of responsibility is to be set against the bereaved mother. She, like thousands of householders, was using an electrical appliance in what she was entitled to consider was the normal way.” “FIRST-CLASS MENACE” Mr Addison said that what the public did not know was that immediately an apparatus was connected with a lamp socket by a two-pin adaptor and a twocore flex a potential first-class menace was installed in the home.

“Unfortunately, a sense of false security is often induced by the ready and indiscriminate sale of fittings, and, indeed, apparatus fitted with the handy, though dangerous and obsolete, two-pin adaptor and two-core flex,” continued Mr Addison. “Expert evidence shows that the safest connection is by a threepoint, non-reVersible adaptor and a three-core flex. I hope the public may soon be brought to realize this.”

The Coroner returned a verdict that the cause of death was electrocution, superimposed on status lymphaticus.