A CHILD POISONED.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2266, 11 August 1908, Page 2

A CHILD POISONED.

SAD FATALITY AT TINIROTO.

Information was received by Sergeant Hutton yesterday morning that a little girl named Ivy Florence Butler, aged 15 months, had died at Tiniroto as a result of being poisoned by eating matches. The little one was living with her mother, who was cooking in a bush camp on Mr. Spence’s station. It appears that the child was crawling about the camp on last Wednesday afternoon, and got hold of a box of matches, and commenced to suck them. Some little time elapsed before slie was discovered, and later on the child became extremely iH, and showed no improvement on the following day. Sucli home remedies as were available were applied, but to no avail, and the child eventually appeared so ill that she ivas brought into Tiniroto on Sunday. No medical aid was available there, and attempts to communicate with other places by telephone Tailed owing to the wires being interrupted ljy tlie heavy weather. The child died in great- agony at about 4.30 yesterday morning. - Sergeant Hutton, on receiving the news, at once despatched MountedConstable Dandy to the scene, where he arrived last evening. The child annears to have been well cared for, the body is well nourished, and all the circumstances point to the fact that the fatality was purely accidental. In consequence of a Justice of the Peace being unavailable in the localIty, and also of the expense of sending one from here, as well as a medical man, Sergeant Hutton has arranged that the body of tlie child shall be taken to Wairoa, where an inquest will be held by Mr. W. A. Barton, S.M., who is at present on Ins periodical visit to that district. Mr. Cooper, of the Tiniroto Hotel, will convey the body and the three witnesses to Wairoa this morning, and will be accompanied by Constable Dandy.