Shocking Mining Accident.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 143, 22 May 1885, Page 2

Shocking Mining Accident.

The Victorian Mining Department has ■ been furnished with a special. report by the Inspector of Mines, relative to a fatal aQejdont which occured at the Imperial mine, looated m the Ballarat district. The mine is worked by Mr John Trezise and five sons. One the 28rd ult., at 9 o'clook m the morning, two young women went to the shaft, which is 100 ft deep, and asked to be permitted to go below. One of the young women was a Miss Martha Williams, on a visit from Melbourne. She was 'to have returned home on the following day. They had been l'efused permission to go down the shaft on the previous day, but one of tho Treziso's sons (Thomas) gave tho permission asked for. He put the young women on the edge of the bucket, telling them to hold on to .the rope. The bucket had only decended about three feet when Miss Williams' dress caught on the signal hammer. The further descent of the bncket was stoppe.l, and young Trezisc cleared the dress, but after he had done so Miss Williams fell off the buekqfc and to the bottom of the shaft. She died about ten minutes afterwards. An inquest was hold, and the jury returned a verdict of accidental death. The Inspector states that : there was an infringement of the Regulation of Mines ; Act. He concludes, his report by stating : — . "I must say n more mad act. l nover heard of mmy life, than to allow two girls to decend m a shaft, standing on the edge of a bucket, and not even to put a j strap around them, and no man with j them. It appears to me this is a case for a prosecution." Instructions have J been given to institute criminal proceed- i ings against Thomas Trozise. ]