FOOD POISONING

Taranaki Daily News, 21 February 1935, Page 7

FOOD POISONING

DEATH OF AUCKLAND WOMAN. EVIDENCE AT THE INQUEST. By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, February 19. A case of fatal food poisoning in the Pukekohe district was ' investigated by Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., coroner, at the inquest to-day concerning the death on December 13 of Mrs. Lucy Nicholson, aged 40, of Buckland. Hazel Play said she lived near the Nicholsons. On December 10 she visited their home and assisted Mrs. Nicholson with cooking. Spanish cream was made, the ingredients being gelatine, three eggs, which witness thought were duck eggs, three pints of milk, half a cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and half a teaspoon of vanilla. The ingredients were taken from a cupboard. Mrs. Nicholson was in good health when she spoke with witness over the telephone in the evening, .but on the following morning her son, her daughter and herself were ill. Mrs. Nicholson said they must have been poisoned, and she thought it was meat that was responsible. Later Mrs. Nicholson said her husband had become ill. Witness added that she found the four members of the Nicholson family ill in bed on the morning of December 12. A doctor subsequently ordered the admission of the victims to hospital. A son of the dead woman, Eric Nicholson, aged 24, said h e had been in hospital for eight days' as the result of food poisoning. With his father, mother and sister he had eaten a meal of roast beef, boiled potatoes, Spanish cream and banana custard between eigh-' and nine o'clock on the evening of December 10. The coroner said that Dr. Gilmour, pathologist at the Auckland hospital, had made a post-mortem examination which had resulted in the isolation of the bacillus aertrycke, and the pathologist’s opinion was that death was caused by food poisoning. He had examined other articles, including those obtained from the house, and the bacillus was isolated from the Spanish cream. It was not possible, however, to say from what ingredient in the dish the infection came. The cproner said the infection might have been in anything. The weather at the time was hot. He understood the germ had been known to occur in duck eggs. A verdict of death by food poisoning was returned.