YOUTH FORESAW DEATH IN IRON LUNG

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5321, 6 February 1947, Page 2

YOUTH FORESAW DEATH IN IRON LUNG

SYDNEY. Two weeks before his death, John McMahon, 119, the Sydney youth who had lived- for' 10 years in an iron lung at a children' s hospital, told his, father that he had a feeling that the alectricity supply at the Bunnerong oower station would fail. The plant broke recently, and when the hospital amergency plant failed and the iron lung was unable to function, McMahon Jied. A victim of infantile paralysis since he was nine, McMahon had accepted his life in t'he iron lung and was always happy. He progressed, and was able to leave the lung for hours at a cime, bxxt in the last two years- he had s-uffered a setback and rarely was taken from the lung for more than a few minutes. ■ Two weeks ago he told his father fchafhe had noticed slight -fluctuations in the electricity p-ower, and said: "Things are not so g-ood at Bunnerong. I think 'Bunnerong will fail." His parents were grief-stricken when McMahon died, and many floral tributes were sent to the funeral by strangers. Mrs. McMahon, who had ittended the Requiem Mass for h' son in the morning, made a token appearance in the afternoon, at the same church., at the wedding of one -of her son's friends. She was keeping a promise- to her son to attend the wedding and felt that she was bound to go to the church, if only for a minute. Earlier in the week he had insisted that she should go to the wedding, when she had demurred because' it clashed with her usual visiting hour^