PICNIC TRAGEDY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 248, 10 June 1932, Page 6

PICNIC TRAGEDY

FALL FROM CLIFF RESULTS IN INSTANT DEATH OF GIRL. COMPANION'S MEMORY SUFFERS A suggestion that a boy will never remember the part he played in a tragedy at a picnic party was made at an inquest at Polperro, Cornwall, on Hermione Cowie, aged 19, of Brackesham, near Chichester. Miss Cowie was climbing a cliff with her cousin, Alec Lamaison, head boy at Charterhouse School, when they both fell. Mr. John Sinclair Morrison, of Stanhope Gardens, South Kensington, S.W., said he' saw the couple climbing the face of the cliff and went to meet them. "I later found Lamaison on a ledge within ten feet of the water," he continued. "I shouted to him and as he replied queerly I went down. He was delirious and his arm was bleeding. I aslced him where the girl was, and he said, 'She has gone for a walk'." Dr. Toogood: Is the cliff very steep? — It is easy to get up without a rope. I went up and down several times. Dr. Wiliiam R. Square said that Lamaison was suffering from shoek and had a dislocated shoulder. "I questioned him, but he could remember nothing about the accident," said Dr. Square. "The last thing he remembered was that he was on the grass and not on rocks." Lamaison would probably never remember what had happened. Miss Cowie had a large scalp wound which caused instant ' death. Dr. Toogood, the coroner, said it was obvious that they had both fallen down the cliff and that Lamaison, by some superhuman effort, had got back to the ledge. A verdict of accidental death was returned.