FEAR OF LOSING JOB

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 150, 21 March 1939, Page 10

FEAR OF LOSING JOB

Railways Worker Who Was

Found Drowned

A statement that his father had been worried over the effects of an accident to him which he feared to mention in case it should, coupled with the fact of his age, result in him losing his employment at the Hutt railway workshops, was made by Maurice George Talbut, aged 18, motor body builder, at an inquest at Petone yesterday on his father, Frederick Walter James Talbut, labourer, aged 61, late of Kensington Avenue, Petone. , Talbut, senior, clocked into work at 7.15 a.m. one day last week and was found two hours later in the stream which runs by the workshops. The coroner, Mr. E. Gilbertson, returned a verdict of “found drowned.” He said he could not find suicide on the evidence. Senior-Sergeant H. C. D. Wade conducted the inquest. James Talbut said his father had been in poor health for six months. He had been struck by a sleeper at work and he felt pain at night as a result. Charles Leonard Hayton, machinist, railway workshops, said he found Talbut face down in three feet of water in the Waiwetu stream. Footprints indicated that Talbut had walked into the water, back to where his hat and coat were found on the bank, and then to the water again. He wir s clinging to a pile. Constable J. J. Culloty and Dr. P. P. Lynbh, pathologist, who said death was caused by drowning, also gave evidence.

Senior-Sergeant Wade said that' the fact of Talbut being found clinging to a pile might indicate two things—that he had clung to it to hold himself down in the water, or that, being in the water, he tried to get out, assisting himself by clinging to the pile.