DEATH OF AN INFANT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19806, 23 May 1934, Page 10

DEATH OF AN INFANT

BURNED BY HOT MILK PULLED TEAT OFF BOTTLE By Telegraph—Press Association AUCKLAND. May 22. “This is the first case of its kind to come under my notice,” said the Coroner, Mr F. K. Hunt, at the inquest concerning the death of a nine months old child, George William Banbury, who died in the Auckland hospital on Sunday from burns received when he pulled the teat off his bottle of hot milk. Harriet May Ravner. of Papatoetoe, foster mother of the child, said that 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 ;t in the bottle and it appeared to be about the right heat,” witness continued. 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 the bottle and she 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 that 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.