CHILDREN SUFFOCATED.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17408, 22 May 1928, Page 5

CHILDREN SUFFOCATED.

MOTHER UNAWARE OF TRAGEDY. Brother and sister, .Tack Smith, aged five years, and Elsie Smith, three years, were suffocated by smoke in I heir sleep at a house in May Park Terrace, Shipley, Yorkshire. Their widowed mother, Mrs Alice Smith, was in the house ?t the time, but unaware that anything was wrong in the bedroom above. It appears that Mrs Smith put the two children to bed about G. 40 p.m., and returned downstairs. Twenty minutes later her eldest child, Vera, aged nine', entered the house and noticed that the sitting-room was full of smoke. She informed her mother, and Mrs Smith ran upstairs to the children’s bedroom. Opening the door, she found that two wooden boxes in the corner of the room were smouldering, and dense volumes of smoke were pouring from them. The children were, unconscious, and medical aid was summoned. Dr. McCann, of Windhill, was quickly on the scene, and artificial respiration was applied for two hours without success. In the meantime Mr Frank Sellars, a lodger, who was in the house at the time of the discovery, succeeded in extinguishing the outbreak. Mystery surrounds the manner in which ihe boxes became ignited. The theory that one of the children might have struck a match to long might have struck a match to look inside the upper box is regarded as imwhicli elapsed before the outbreak was discovered.