WOMAN STABBED.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18848, 10 April 1931, Page 12

WOMAN STABBED.

“INDIAN BASKET TRICK.” “The girl who defies death” narrowly escaped being killed at the Royal Agricultural Show in Sydney, when a sword, driven through the 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 dismayed. “Accidents will happen,” she said, "but I have not lost my nerve. I will be ‘defying death’ again as soon as the doctor will allow me.”