A FIGHT TO DEATH.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8911, 3 September 1907, Page 4

A FIGHT TO DEATH.

An awful fall and terrible death resulted from a quarrel between two men working on the upper floor of Holt’s brewery, in Shadwell, London. Differences arose between the two, and there was recrimination followed by blows, and then two bodies were seen flying through the air. They fell to the groundone a corpse, the other torn and mangled so much that he died an hour afterwards. Holt’s brewery is a five-storey building, which has one frontage op the River Tnames and the other on Broad street, Shadwell. In the upper storey of this building is a crane by moans of which sacks of malt are hoisted up from barges in the Thames and taken to the stories beside the brewery. The sacks rest on a ledge outside a loop hole in the wall When they are hoisted from the barge they arc carried by the corn-porters to the stores. The loop holes are open to the river, and there is nothing to prevent a man falling outwards. On the upper floors three men were at work unloading malt from a barge. Their names were John BeuCamiu Oox, aged (50; Henry Middlebrook, aged 46; the third man was a brother of Middlebrook. They wore working at piece work, and wore hastening to get finished. Middlebrook’s brother had occasion to leave them for a few minutes. What happened iu the meantime is somewhat of a mystery, but it is certain that a fight took place, for tnere were sounds of a struggle. Tliis lasted for about three minutes, and then the men working on the lower floors were horrified to see two bodies flying through the air, and falling with an awful crash on the foreshore ot the Thames. The loop hole at which they were piece working wa's 54 feet above the level of the ground. Lying moored at the foot of the brewery was the barge _ Jessie, the property of Mr W, Baichin. Cov in falling struck this barge, and was killed instantly. He had a long contused wound on the skull, and his shoulder as fractured. Middlebrook fell on the foreshore, and when he was picked up he was found to be suffering from a compound fracture of the shinbone. He was removed on an ambulance to tlio Loudon Hospital, where he died an hour and a half after admission. Of the awful struggle which took place on the top floor of the brewery the details can only be imaigned. But that it was a severe one can be gathered from the fact that iu three places on the floor were bloodstains, and the men’s caps were lying near the loop hole. They were both short men, but, like all corn porters, had great physical strength. As blow followed blow they seem to have lost all thoughts of the gaping loop hole, which was for them the gate of death. Nearer and nearer to this the struggle waged, until at last there came a mad plunge, and their rage was turned to terror ac they found themselves falling from the dizzy height at which they had been working. Two awful screams of agony, and then they were lying by the brown waters of the flowing river—two mangled shapes of what a minute before had been men in the full vigour of life. The whole affair was so quickly over that the other men at work in 'the brewery had no time to realise what had happened.