ACCIDENTALLY HANGED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 935, 24 December 1910, Page 4

ACCIDENTALLY HANGED.

What the Coroner described as the most extraordinary case he had ever investigated was inquired into at Oxford, when an inquest was held on Theodore William Meyer, 12, son of Sir W. S. Meyer, Chief Secretary of the Madras Presidency. The boy was a pupil of Dr Williams’ school at Summertowu, near Oxford. After returning from the football field he went into the schoolroom, where there were about twenty other boys, reading books and papers. He spoke to a scholar named Somerville, and put a piece of string round his neck, trying to pull it tight. Somerville told him to go away, and he did so. About a quarter of an hour later Meyer was found in an unconscious condition near a window with a ventilator cord tied in a slip knot round his neck. He had not been seen sitting at the window by any ot the other boys, two of whom had been at a table within a yard of it. Both the boys stated that they did not hear any noise. Meyer had evidently been reading an illustrated periodical. His feet were touching the floor, and the theory of the medical men was that the slight pressure of the cord round his neck had induced a condition of semi-consciousness, in which state he bad rolled off his seat and became partially suspended. The marks on the neck proved that it was an accident, because the cord had not been put completely round the neck, but simply across the front of the throat, and carried up behind the ears and over the head. The jury returned a verdict of "death by misadventure,” adding a rider that they considered no blame attached to Dr Williams or his staff. They expressed sympathy with the relatives of the lad. Lady Meyer was coming from India to see her son at Christmas.