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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 145, 10 March 1874, Page 2

Rather a touching incident is related by the Geelong Advertiser as having recently occurred near Colac. Some time last week the wife of a wood-splitter, whose vocation calls him away from home for days at a time, called her four young children to her, and got them to assist her in pulling the mattrass from off the bed on to the floor. This done she embraced them all round, begged them to be fond and dutiful children, and told them she was going to die. She then lay down on the mattrass, and, as they thought, went to sleep. All day the children kept quiet, so as not" to wake their mother, and almost went without food. The night passed and the morning came, still their mother slept, and the eldest child went to a store where the family was in the habit of dealing, got a loaf of bread and some butter, and quietly fed her younger brothers and sisters. Throughout the day the mother slept, and the children kept as quiet as possible until evening, when the father came home from his work. Then the eldest child told him what the mother had said, and how long she had been asleep. The unfortunate husband then found that his wife was dead. An inquest was subsequently held, and a verdict was returned that, the deceased died from natural causes, it is supposed from disease of the heart, and it is thought that the woman died directly she laid down.