ALIVE OR DEAD?

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 94, 12 July 1927, Page 6

ALIVE OR DEAD?

CONSTABLE’S DILEMMA INQUEST ON BOY CYCLIST liow a boy presumably dead showed signs of life after being taken to a mortuary was described at a recent inquest at Shoreditch on George William Summers, who, while cycling, came into contact with a motor-car. P.C. Mackway said that while he was examining the body at the mortuary—where the boy had been taken after a doctor had certified death—he noticed signs of life, whereupon the youth was taken to St. Leonard’s Hospital, Shoreditch. Dr. Edward Hugh Roberts, who was summoned to the accident, said he could not detect any signs of animation in the boy. He therefore concluded that he was dead. The only explanation he could give that this was not so was that the nerve centres of the spinal cord directly after the accident had become suspended and. afterwards there was a slight return of activity to those centres, with breathing. Dr. G. E. Froggatt, of St. Leonard’s Hospital, said that the injured youth died about an hour and a.-half after admission. He agreed that a grave injury such as the lad had received might present all the signs of death. He had known cases in which breathing had apparently ceased, but had started again. Dr. Edwin Smith, the coroner, said that instances of the same kind occurred at electric power stations where people after an electric shock had at first been thought to be dead. A verdict of accidental death was recorded.