SUSPICIOUS CASE.

South Canterbury Times, Volume XV, Issue 2061, 1 November 1879, Page 3

SUSPICIOUS CASE.

The adjourned inquest on the body of the infant child named Agatha Lamborn, who died at her parent’s residence, Kinkora-street, Hawthorn, on Ist inst., whilst in charge of a nursegirl named Margaret Gallagher, was resumed on Tuesday. The evidence of Mr Johnson, Government analyst, went to show that there was not the slightest trace of poison discoverable in the remains, and that the mark on the child’s left hand was the result of a burn, most probably caused by a safety match being applied close to the skin. A witness named James Hunter, a boot hawker, deposed to seeing the girl Gallagher in a paddock near Mr Lamborn’s house on the Ist instant, and that she shook, beat, and either threw or let fall the child to the ground. He remonstrated with her, but she told him to mind his own business. He had also seen the same girl ill treating a child in a similar way about the same spot a fortnight previously. A domestic servant in Mr Lamborn’s employ deposed that Gallagher had threatened to beat the children the day she left, and give them something to remember. The medical testimony of Messrs Girdlestone and Embling was that death had been caused by a shock, the nature of which they could not state. The girl otated that she had accidently let the child fall on the ground in the paddock, and afterwards, finding her legs cold, brought her to the kitchen range to warm, mien her hand must have touched the door of the range. The jury after about half an hour’s deliberation, found that the deceased died from a shock caused by accidentally falling from the arras of its nurse, Margaret Gallagher. The latter was then discharged from custody.—“ Australian.”