FLY POISON CAUSES CHILD’S DEATH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 118, 23 May 1946, Page 5

FLY POISON CAUSES CHILD’S DEATH

SWALLOWED IT FROM SAUCER IN NEIGHBOUR’S HOUSE (P.A.) Auckland, May 22. “This case is just a warning we can take, that these things seem to be a menace to little children.” said lhe coroner, Mr. A. Addison, whin concluding an inquest into lhe death of Alan Lewis Ireland, aged two years, son of F. G. Ireland, of Remuera, who died in the Green Lane Hospital on April 6, after swallowing some of the liquid fly poison. Shirley Millicent Ireland, mother of the child, said that on April 5 her son apparently went through a fence into the home of Mrs. Bedford. When witness saw him with tne neighbour he was very pale, .and when Mrs. Bedford said he had swallowed poison, witness put her finger down his throat to make him ill. She administered salt and water as emetic, and later took him to the hospital. Mrs. Mimic Hewat Bedford said that when she was working in her kitchen she heard the child cough and knew it was Alan Ireland. She went into a sunporch and the deceased was holding a saucer containing fly poison. She asked if he had swallowed any and when he replied that he had, she took him straight to his mother. A verdict was returned in accordance with the medical evidence, that the child died of arsenical poisoning, following ingestion of fly poison.