Obituaries Australia

A case of very sudden death happened at nine o clock on Wednesday morning in the printing-office of Messrs Wreford and Co., Armstrong street. A compositor named George Cox, who had been in the employ of Messrs Wreford and Co. for over four years "off and on,” fell down in a fit and died in about two minutes. He had gone to his work as usual in the morning in his ordinary health, which has not been very good of late years. He worked at his “frame" until nine, when Mr Reay, who was in the office with him, heard him breathing very heavily. He went round to his frame and found him in the act of falling down. He had his compositor’s “stick” in his hand and when he fell held it tightly in his grasp till it was taken from the hand after death. Mr Reay loosed the deceased's neck-tie, when he saw that Cox was falling down, and Mr Wreford, who had not long left the shop, was sent for. When he arrived the deceased was gasping for breath and soon expired. He was a married man. Mr Wreford called in Dr Dimock and Mr Rand, the chemist, when he heard of the deceased's illness, but they did not arrive in time to render any assistance. Dr Clendinning held an inquest in the afternoon as to the cause of death. Dr Bunce, gave evidence that death arose from serious apoplexy, accelerated by disease of the heart, and the jury returned a verdict in accordance with that opinion. As deceased died in a state of poverty, leaving no effects behind, him, it is, we understand, intended to organise a subscription to defray the expenses of the interment of the body. The deceased was born in Devonshire, and arrived in the colony in 1852, and for some time in the following year worked on the Melbourne Herald newspaper, and, in conjunction with others, started the Bendigo Mercury. After the sale of that paper he came to Ballarat in the year 1856, and was engaged by the late Mr Henry Seekamp, of the Ballarat Times, as collector. Soon after the transfer of that paper to Messrs Cuthbert, Dunne, and Walsh, he occupied the position of overseer on that journal, which he held until early in the year 1859, when he left in consequence of the firm reducing the expenditure. The deceased in conjunction with five others in March of the same year produced the North Grenville Mercury. This paper proving a failure, necessitated his leaving Ballarat to look for employment in Melbourne, from which place he went to New Zealand, and thence back to Ballarat. The deceased was an excellent workman; he had only recently been discharged from the Ballarat Hospital, whore he had been an inmate for an affection of the lungs. The funeral will take place to-day at three o’clock.