WAREHOUSE FIRE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19959, 17 November 1934, Page 18

WAREHOUSE FIRE

EVIDENCE AT INQUEST By Telegraph—Press Association : CHRISTCHURCH, November 16. j Further evidence was given to-day ;by William Davidson, manager of i Davidson and Co., Ltd., at the | Coroner’s inquiry into the fire in the company’s warehouse. Lichfield Street, on June 8. This is the eleventh day of the hearing. The witness was questioned by Chief Detective Dunlop. Witness said on the night of the fire he went hurriedly to the warehouse. A married daughter accompanied him. The Chief Detective referred to the evidence previously given, that witness’ cur was seen outside the warehouse about 12.30 a.m. on the night of the fire. “I think they are mistaken,” said witness, who agreed with the Chief Detective that the two witnesses concerned should know his car when they saw it. “I was at home with my car before midnight,” witness declared. The Chief Detective: Then both these men were wrong when they say they saw the car after midnight?— That is so. Later witness said one of the other witnesses, Wilson, the storeman, was wrong in his estimate of the stock that had been in the warehouse at the time. Wilson, he declared, had been strongly influenced to give evidence in favour of the insurance companies. Davidson was cross-examined at length and in detail about items in the stock alleged to be wholly destroyed leaving no trace, and about the position of the books mislaid or lost since the fire. Witness insisted that the goods in the store at the time of the fire were worth £2113. Deducting salvaged stock, the goods remaining should have been worth £2OIB. This he claimed was the actual loss by fire. Questions were asked about certain goods purchased through Davidson and Co., but supplied by another firm and shipped direct to the West Coast. Witness was asked whether this procedure did not swell the purchases as shown in the books without a corresponding entry of sales. To a question whether it did not swell his statement of claim by swelling his purchases, witness replied “I suppose it does.” The Coroner, to the clerk: Take that down. Chief Detective Dunlop and Mr Thomas (in unison): That is what we wanted. In order to try to hasten the end of the enquiry, the Coroner sat this evening, but the enquiry will go on for some days yet. Witness was examined about altered invoices, which it was suggested were so altered in order to increase the apparent stocks held and so increase the amount of the insurance claim.