GHASTLY MISTAKE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 680, 4 June 1929, Page 9

GHASTLY MISTAKE

WRONGFUL DEATH REPORT To discover that her. husband was alive, after she had oraered a coffin and grave to vhim, was the experience of a Brixton woman, whose painful ordeal brought on collapse. Confusion between the identity of two hospital patients was the prime cause of the mistake. In the early hours of the morning a policeman conveyed word to the woman that her husband, who uad been ill w’ith heart trouble in the hospital, was worse, and she hastened there in a taxicab. Upon arriving she was informed that her husband was dead, and her request to see the body waa granted. The hair was like that of her husband, the build was similar; and the features resembled his. In a distressed condition she sent off telegrams to friends and visited the undertaker. When the woman returned to the hospital for the death certificate she was informed that a mistake had been made and that her husband was still alive. She collapsed, and was in a semi-conscious condition for nearly two hours. On recovering, the nerve-racked woman bravely went to her husband, and, concealing her distress, did her utmost to cheer him. The mistake, it was revealed, arose over a similarity in the names of the sick husband and a man who died in the same ward. Fearing that the knowledge of the mistake might adversely affect the man, who is lying seriously ill, the hospital authorities deemed it advisable not to divulge the names of the people concerned.