INQUEST.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 443, 19 October 1880, Page 2

INQUEST.

An inquest was held yesterday at the Somerset Hotel, Head of the Bay, Akarea, on the' body of Alfred Peter Green, aged three months, before Mr Justin Aylmer, Coroner, and a jury of which Mr B. Shadbolt was foreman.

Mrs Green, the child's mother, stated that the child was ill on Thursday, when she gave it a toaspoonful of castor oil ; it seemed to get better, and again on Friday she repeated the dose, the child evidently improving. 5 At 7"HO that evening she took the child to Mrs Sheard's, and left it there, in order to atten 1 a ball anl concert. She returned at 1 a.m. she returned and took the child home. After sitting down she laid the child across her knees, on its stomach. 'It laid there some tinio, but when she turned it over it was quite black. She must have fainted about this time, as she remembered nothing more.

Mrs Sheard stated tiiat Mra Green brought the child to her house on Friday evening at 7*30 o'clock. She allowed it to lie on a sofa there while she attended the ball and concert at the echoelhouse. The child remained there until Mrs Green returned. She remarked to her—" That if that was my child I should think it was dying." Mrs Green replied—" Yen, I think so, but it was worse in the middle of the day," and took the child home.

Dr Guthrie stated, that he had made a post mortem examination on the body, and found that the child had died from congestion of the lungs. In answer to the police, Dr Guthrie stated that taking the child out at that hour of night had certainly hastened its death ; also that the mother might not have known what was the matter with the child.

The jury returned a verdict—That the child died from natural causes, adding a rider to the effect that the mother was greatly to Jblame, for taking the child out at such a time of night in the state it -was

Mrs Green was called before the Coroner and informed of the rider; the Coroner stating that he concurred with the jury in their finding, and remarked that it was most unnatural in the mother to bring a child in that state out at night; also explaining the law in such cases, that anyone hastening the death of another was liable to a charge of manslaughter.