A SAD FATALITY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 275, 29 December 1909, Page 2

A SAD FATALITY

TWO CIKLS DISOWNED AT TOKO. _ Ihe Stratford police received information on Monday afternoon that two young women named Jessie Burgess, aged 21, and Ada Choer, aged 10 had been drowned in the Mangaehu mar, near the Toko road creamery, at about 2.30 p.m. Information supplied to the police states that the girls were sitting on the bank of the river which at th° spot is ten or twelve feet deep,'and both slipped in. Constants Weasel and Crawford went out to assist in the recovery of the bodies. Miss Bur-ess „,s employed by Mr. C. Bayly, of Toko road, and was a niece of Mr. 'S. CI. Burgess, of Stratford. Miss Cheer's fa the,resides at Toko.

Tho spot where the sad affair too,; place is a very beautiful one, a little way from the Matemateonga tunnel. It is understood that some ladies witnessed the disaster and state that the girls were standing in tho shallow water holding each other's hands when tliey slipped oil a ledge into deep water, There was quite a number of people in the vicinity, the occasion bciii" a large picnic. „ " . Several attempts to recover tile bodies by diving have, so far, been un successful at the time of writing, the bottom of the whole in which the gir',3 were drowned consisting, one of those which dived into it told our representative, of thick sticky mud.—Post.