STRANGE DEATH OF BABY

Taranaki Daily News, 23 May 1934, Page 7

STRANGE DEATH OF BABY

BURNED BY MILK FROM BOTTLE.

EVIDENCE GIVEN AT INQUEST. By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. “This is the first case of its kind to come under m'y notice,” said the coroner Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., at an inquest to-day concerning the death of a nine-months-old child, George William Banbury, who died in the Auckland Hospital on Sunday following bums received when he pulled the tea off his bottle of hot milk.. Harriet May Rayner, Papatoetoe, fos-ter-mother of the child, said she gave the child a bottle of milk. She had heated the milk in a container and put it in a bottle with a rubber teat attached. “I tested the milk with my finger before putting it in the bottle and it appeared to be about the right heat,” she said. “The child took the bottle with his two hands, with the teat in his mouth, and commenced to suck. He always used to feed himself from a bottle, and we did not have to hold him up to feed him. I looked at him almost immediately after giving him the bottle and noticed that the teat was off. It was then in his mouth, having come off the bottle through his tugging at it. The contents of the bottle were spilled over his head and shoulder.” “I think I can come to no other conclusion except that it was a case of misadventure,” said Mr. Hunt in returning a verdict that death was due to toxaemia and bronchitis following burns accidentally received.