AN INFANT’S DEATH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3774, 26 September 1907, Page 3

AN INFANT’S DEATH.

An inquest on the body of Ronald Richard Pearson, a young child slightly over three months of age, the son of Fanny Louisa Pearson was held at Palmerston on Monday. The evidence of the mother, Fanny Louisa Pearson, was to the effect that the child was born on June 6th, 1907. She left it at Mrs Bromley’s infant home at Ashhurst for a time. On the 7th September she took it to Mrs Parke’s registered home in Main Street East, where the child died on Saturday morning. As far as she knew the child was healthy when brought to Mrs Parkes’ home.

Dr O’Brien stated that he had been called in, at about 8 a.m. on the 21st inst. The child was lying on a couch and had, in his opinion, been dead a couple of hours. He made a post-mortem examination yesterday morning, and found that the cause of death to be a congenitally weak heart and broncho-pneumonia at the apex of the right lung. One thing that he noticed was the fact that the child was lying on a couch in a room by itself, and it appeared that the child had been left there all night. This, in his opinion, was not a suitable place for a child to be left alone all night, especially in the condition he was in. The child appeared to have been well nourished and the stomach contained food.

Mrs Bromley, of Ashhurst, gave evidence to the effect that the child had been under her care for a short time, and during that time she had noticed that it used to turn quite blue when crying. Mrs M. J. Parkes stoted that the child slept on the conch in the room in which the death occurred. Both she and her daughter could h£ar if the child cried during the night, and usually attended him twice during the night. The inquest was then adjourned until Tuesday, ist October, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, owing to the illness of an important witness.