FATAL ACCIDENT AT A PICNIC.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2475, 23 February 1881, Page 4

FATAL ACCIDENT AT A PICNIC.

A singular accident occurred at a pic-nic at Taranaki on February 9th, resulting in the death of a child named Harold Jackson. At the inquest which followed Thomas Humphries deposed that he attended the Wesleyan Sunday School picnic on Wednesday. At about four o’clock he was sitting near the tree giving out tickets to about 70 children who were in front of him. He was sitting in the same place he did last year, close by the tea-tables. Witness heard a cracking or breaking of the limb of a tree behind him, and the children in front cried out and ran away. Immediately after he found the trunk of a large branch of a tree about two feet through lying on the ground close to his left; the end of it being about one foot from him. The body of Harold Jackson was lying on the upper side of the trunk of the tree, with his vitals on the grass. On the lower side was a little girl with her leg under the tree. Immediately afterwards a number of people came to the spot. The body of the little boy was removed at once, he being alive, but unconscious. About thirty people then lifted the tree and moved the little girl from under it. Twelve months ago the tree was in the position it was on the 9th inst., and was a source of amusement to the children at the last Wesleyan Sunday-school Anniversary. Other picnics hare been held there, and the children have amused themselves by climbing into the branches of the tree. At half-past one Mr Collis, jun.; and witness noticed the tree full of boys, about thirty being in its branches. They went at about two o’clock to make sure if it was safe, but with all the boys on it they could not shake it. The unaccountable part of it is that at the time of the accident there were not a dozen children on the tree. The tree is a large branch of a totara, which had been broken off, and in falling the branches stuck into the tround, and the butt projected into the air about seven feet, apparently very firmly fixed by the long forks in the ground. The deceased at the time of the accident was being led by his sister, and she escaped unhurt.

The jury returned a verdict “ That the deceased met his death by the accidental rolling of the branch of a tree, and that no blame is attached to any of those in charge of the picnic,”