MIDNIGHT TRAGEDY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 727, 30 December 1933, Page 5

MIDNIGHT TRAGEDY

("PosC Special Coi'responUent.)

BROTHER AND SISTER DRIYE OYER BANIC IN FOG GIRL LOSES LIFE

London, November 26 Tragedy overbook a sister and bro•ther jus:t after they had started to return home in dense fog from a dance at Richimond, Surrey. Miss Joan Blakney, aged 25, daughter of Bri|g!.-General R- B. D. Blakeney, of Iverna Gardens, Kensington, w;as in a car with her brother Mj. John Blakeney, aged 22. He had driven the car to the foot of Friars Lane and was trying to turn it round on tha T'hames-side towpath. He overshot the edge of the towpath in the fog and the car and its oceup'an'bs toppled into the river, which was 10ft or 12ift deep. Miss Blakeney W.3S drowned, but her br other, after frantic efforts to save her, reached the river bank exhausted. Brig.-Gen. Blakeney said: "My son told me in a (few sentences before we put him to bed that he had struggle d tremendously to save his sister. "He said: 'The fog was as blaek ias pitch, and the first I knew was when the water splashed over my face, the windows of the car being open. I tried to get Joan out, and cau-gjht her arm, but there was no movement. I was tangled up with the steering-gear and the water was all over us-' " General Blakeney said his son did not seem to know what happened after that. "He kept telling me," he said how he tried to release his sister and that somehow or other he got out of the car, but could not bring her out with him." Two h'ours after the accidfcnt. when the tide had receded, the car could be seen and Miss Blakeney'? body was recovered.