Obituaries Australia

An inquest was held here at Mr. George Matthews' Traveller's Home, by George T. Clark, Esq., district coroner, touching the death of one Thomas Banes, aged thirty-eight years, a labourer residing at the place. It appeared by the evidence of Mrs. Banes, corroborated by another witness, who was in the house, or rather tent, at the time that the deceased was working on the road, near to the weather-board on the mountain road, and had left his wife, together with two young children, to reside in the tent until such time as he had completed his job–that, on Monday, the 1st of December, he returned home by the five o'clock train from Penrith, and appeared very ill, and almost unable to walk to his tent, which is not more than two or three hundred yards from the station. When his wife assisted him into the tent, he complained of violent pain in the chest and head. His wife, assisted by the other witness, paid every attention to him during the night, but could not get relief for him. As he appeared to be getting worse, the next morning Dr. Wilmott was sent for. That gentleman, as is usual with him, made all possible haste, but, alas, the poor man had expired just as the doctor was inside of the tent. It appears that the deceased was working all day in the very oppressive heat, on Thursday, the 27th November, and that during the day he drank very excessively of cold water, and in the evening, after he had completed his day's work, he went to a spring, and drank, according to his own words, nearly two quarts of the water, and from that time he gradually became worse. He has left a wife and two young children to deplore their loss. The jury returned a verdict, that the exposure to the heat, together with drinking the cold water, was the cause of death.