BURNED TO DEATH ON HORSEBACK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 76, 20 March 1880, Page 2

BURNED TO DEATH ON HORSEBACK.

(New York Sun.) Adam Roche, a fifteen-year-old son of Frederick Roche, a blacksmith at the Continental shaft in Scranton city, was burned to death on the afternoon of Dec. 14, on the road between Scranton and Taylorville. He was employed around the blacksmith shop as an asssistant. Some of the live-stock at the mines became sick, and young Roche was sent to Taylorville to procure some vitrol. He went on horseback. He purchased a bottle containing a pint and started back, bringing two mules along. Half way between Taylorville and the mine the cork came out of the bottle, and the jolting caused the vitrol to spatter into his coat pocket. Then 'it slowly worked through his pantaloons and went streaming along his limbs. The first touch of the vitrol caused the lad to shout with pain, and the last contents of the bottle were spilled into his clothing. His cries of agony spurred the horses into a run, ancTthe suffering boy endeavored to throw the bottle from his pocket. This action burned his hands severely, and he clasped them to his face, which added greatly to his agony. He lost control of Ins horse, and just at the foot of a steep declivity in the road, he was hurled violently into a ditch, where he lay writhing in anguish. He recovered sufficiently to tie the mules to a tree. The horse went back to the mines, and the boy’s father and several others set* out to find the lad. When he vas discovered he was dead. The oil had eaten into iris limbs, and he presented a frightful spectacle. His hands were badly blistered, his cheeks burned, and the vitrol had sunk to the bones of his legs. The boy had torn away nearly all of his clothing except what had been saturated with oil. A large -wound in his head showed that he had been thrown forward from the horse. He had crawled to a tree at the hillside, and his appearance showed that he had suffered the greatest agony.