A DEADLY POND.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2505, 16 January 1877, Page 2

A DEADLY POND.

Some remarkable statements were made at an inquest held at £ury, in Lancashire, on Saturday, respecting a mill-stream lodge known as "Old Charley's Lodge/ or "The Hatter's Cemetery," in which a young woman, aged 19, drowned herself. The lodge, it seems, is in the midst of a thickly populated neighborhood, and it is not protected by any fence. The water being warm, it offers unusual temptation to suicide, and, owing to its unguarded condition, it is also a scene of many fatal accidents to young children, who falfinto it while playing on the bank. The Coroner said he considered it a public scandal that "Old Charley's Lodge" was not fenced off in some way. He had himself held inquests on the bodies A of from 15 to .20 persons who had mitl with their death in that lodge, and he understood that altogether upward of 50 bodies had been taken out of it. He did not think there was another, place in the kingdom to equal it. This is a mistake. The ponds on Hampstead Heath claim to have destroyed more human lives than any I other pieces of water of similar size in Great Britain, and the number of bodies taken out of them is almost beyond calculation. "Old Charley's Lodge" • is, however, beyond doubt a most deadly pool, and a police constable present at the inquest stated that it wa% a common saying in the borough, " I'll go to Old Charley's Lodge," 1 or, "Go to Old Charley's Lodge;" the first being an expression of despair, the second of brutality. The Coroner, with the hearty concurrence of the jury, suggested that he should himself write to the owner of the lodge on the subject, with the view, of having it fenced off, and it is to be hoped that his letter will have the desired effect. •