DEATH BY LIGHTNING.

Evening Star, Issue 3699, 30 December 1874, Page 3

DEATH BY LIGHTNING.

{From the Australasian.) Our Ballarat correspondent says:—“An awfully sudden death occurred to a fine young lad under most painful circumstances. About a month ago Mr Robert Wright, farmer, near the Dowling Forest Racecourse, died rather suddenly from inflammation, caused, it was thought, from taking p heavy drink of cold water when heated. Mrs Wright administered to his estate, and had a brother, Mr Fisher, and a brother-in-law, Mr Walls, who acted as trustees. She received information yesterday afternoon that the presence of the trustees was required in Ballarat to-day, and sent her eldest sou. Robert—a tine lad of fifteen, in whom she had centred all her hopes of being able to struggle through the world a widow—last night to notify the trustees to attend in town to-day. He stayed with one of them all night, and returned home this morning, and after breakfasting he went up to the field where a few men were at work mowing a road round the crop for the mowing machine to get in. It was lightning and thundering heavily at the time, and young Wright took up a rake to help the men to get the swathe together quickly before the rain fell heavily. He had hardly lifted the rake to use it, when a vivid flash of lightning, which was followed by a terrific crash of thunder, felled him j;o the ground a lifeless corpse. Mr Fisher, his uncle, had come over to the farm, and was about going up to where Wright was when he heard the men cry to him to come quickly ; he seeing that some one was down, ran up, but on lifting Wright, he found he was quite dead, and directed the men to carry the body to the house. The crown of the felt hat the poor lad had worn was knocked out, and a fourth of the front part of the rim was cut off as with a knife and lay in shreds on the groun i. The hair on the youth’s head was all singed or burnt, and both ears were blackened. These were the only traces of the electric fluid that Mr Fisher could distinguish. AVright’s mother was almost frantic on hearing of this second sudden bereavement.