Dreadful Affair.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 2, Issue 198, 23 November 1880, Page 2

Dreadful Affair.

The Tasmanian Mail states : A horrible accident took place on October 4. at Risby’s saw mills, Hobart Town, by which a lad named Frank Munn, about 1G years of age, lost his life, under circumstances of so sudden and painful description as to cause a feeling of horror to spread through the whole of the community. The deceased was employed as carpenter’s assistant, and was, during the morning carrying boards for the planing and moulding machine, a work which he completed. , The carpenter had been called away, and it is supposed that the ■deceased then commenced to inspect a new grindstone, which had only been erected the Friday previous, and being novel, was an object of curiosity to those employed on the establishment. Being unused to it, he allowed the belt by which it was to be conne xted with the shaft below, to fall through. He was seen below', by another boy, trying to restore the belt to its proper place,, and was w'arned that he was in a dangerous, position, and that the bolt : would flick his eye out. Shortly afterwards his body was seen by the foreman to be whirling round the main shaft, and on the engine being at once stopped, life was found to be extinct, the body being fearfully re angled. Both legs were found to have been roughly amputated about the knee by knocking alternately against the ceiling above and a fence below the shaft, the arms broken, and the body generally fearfully bruised and -crushed.. It is -supposed that, in trying to disentangle the belt, his hand got caught in the bite of the belt on the

shaft, and being unable to extricate it, the unfortunate lad was whirled aloft, death being, in all probability instantaneous from the shock and the dreadful character of the injuries. The boards on the fence were all torn away by the beating of the legs of the deceased against them, and are all blood-stained, as are also those in the ceiling. ; ‘