YOUNG TEACHER'S TRAGIC DEATH

NZ Truth, Issue 1215, 14 March 1929, Page 1

YOUNG TEACHER'S TRAGIC DEATH

fHERE is drea,d. realisation m the hastily written note, unfinished as it 1 was and trailing off into a thick, uneven pencil line scrabbling across and down the paper upon which Claude Hector Olsen painfully traced his final message before death wrested the pencil from his hands. "Something m the jar is poisonous. I thought it was water, but it must have been—" was the text of the note which the caretaker of the Carterton district high school discovered near the inert body of the young assistant master, a few days ago. There is every indication that Olsen, who was acutely interested, m the development of chemistry, had been conducting, a number of experiments m preparation for the chemistry classes this week. Feeling thirsty, he drank deeply from what appeared to be a bottle of water-glass, and it was only when the agonizing pains of some deadly poison were manifested that he realised the, fatal mistake he had made. Groaning with pain, he must have staggered across the classroom ' to his.d.esk, snatched a pencil from its rack and scribbled what he hoped would tell whoever found him of the awful mistake he made. But Death* stayed his hand.