INQUEST.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2170, 8 February 1881, Page 3

INQUEST.

An inquest was held yesterday afternoon at the Mitre Hotel, Lyttelton, by Dr. Frankish, coroner, before a jury of whom Mr Thomas Merson was foreman, touching the death of Isabella Edgar, who was killed at Gollan's Bay in the manner described in yesterday’s issne.

J. T. Bouse, a duly-qualified medical practitioner, sworn, deposed as to the condition in which he found the deceased when called to attend her on Saturday morning. She showed no sign whatever of consciousness upon being spoken to or moved The symptoms were concussion of the brain. He made a visit on Saturday afternoon and found the deceased in the same unconscious state. On Sunday morning, about eight o’clock, she expired. William Edgar, brother of the deceased, sworn, said he was close by when the accident occurred, and heard a crash, then the screaming of his other sister, and running to see what was the matter found the deceased lying on the bank. She was insensible. The witness described her appearance and the wound be noticed at the back of her head. He carried her into the house and ran for the doctor. Before he heard the crash of the stone he saw no person on the upper road. There were pigs running on the hillside, but be saw no person on the road when he ran for the doctor excepting a man named Alexander Hennay, who ho met coming along the road. His opinion was that a stone started from the main road could not have reached the locale of the accident, nor could it have come from the direction in which he met Hennay. Martha Edgar, a girl of nine years of age, and sister of the deceased, gave evidence similar to the last witness. She said she saw some boys before the accident on the Sumner road, but at this stage the little girl so broke down in her evidence it was impossible for the coroner to get anything intelligently from her in answer to the questions he put. Alexander Hennay, a sailor, sworn, said he was working in the old road about 100 yards to the westward of where the deceased was struck, and beard the children crying out. The witness then corroborated William Edgar’s testimony, and testified to having picked up in an iron tank the fatal boulder, which he identified. There was a fresh broken spot on the stone, indicating that it bad been broken off an abutting rock above, and he found a broken piece of rook also above.

Sergeant-major Mason, in charge of -.he Lyttelton station, sworn, said he examined the spot where the accident occurred. A stone thrown from the upper road could not reach the locale of the accident, a hillock of some forty or fifty feet high intervening between the Sumner roa < and the place where the child was killed. He traced the stone to an overhanging|roct, about 200 yards above’ where he found several loose pieces of rock, and he had no doubt but what the stone produced had been dislodged from there. From the inquiries made by tbe police it had been ascertained that three boys were passing along tho road that morning, but there wae nothing that would connect them with the accident, and both from the hour at which they passed and from tbe examination of tbe ground which had been made, it was impossible they could have been implicated. The jury, after a brief deliberation, returned a verdict of “Accidental death.”