“NOT MY HUSBAND!”

Taranaki Daily News, 2 November 1922, Page 8

“NOT MY HUSBAND!”

IN WRONG COFFINS. WIFE'S DISCOVERY. ' Sydney, Oct. 12. The case at Newcastle last week in which two bodies wore mixed up and placed in the wrong coffins, was the second to have occurred in New South Wales, there having been a similar case at a big Sydney hospital about a year ago. The deaths of two men occurred in the Newcastle Hospital, and the widow of one of them was away when her husband died. As soon as she hoard she hurried to the hospital and asked to have a look at the body before the coffin lid was closed. It is said that she had groat difficulty in having her wish granted, but she was taken to whore the coffin stood. The lid was lifted, and the widow peeped in. She started back: “It. is not my huisbaml,” she said\ The nurse looked in also, and saw the bald head of an elderly man who certainly was not the widow’s deceased husband. The coffin was the correct one. for the name-plate was attached. The staff inferred that the body had been placed in another coffin, and that the body of another man who died about the sam'e time, had been inadvertently exchanged. By this time the other coffin had gone to the residence of the other widow in a far suburb. The only way out of the difficulty was to exchange the coffins and name-plates. The widow whose wish to see her husband was granted in a peculiar way, was very ill, and in poor circumstances, the funeral expenses and the cost of her mourning having to be borne by a city business firm. It war? found later that, the mistake occurred through the bodies being misplaced on the mortuary slabs. Everything was adjusted before the funerals took place