VPRS 24/PO
Unit 24
Item 118
Matilda Buchanan
Inquest held at Ballarat on 28 November 1854
Death from apoplexy induced by intolerance
Coroner D Williams
Jurors
Andrew ….
Richard Loyd
Francis Huring
George Blackburn
Charles Herring
James Walton
William Christies
William Herring
Thomas Browning
William …
John Roe
Henry Hutchinson
good and lawful men of Ballarat
Witness
John Francis Collass of Ballarat Acting Sgt of police
Informed between seven and eight o’clock there was a woman drunk on Bakery Hill. I went with 2 constables and found deceased lying under the eaves of a tent. We tried to wake her and gave her some water, we then fetched a cart and brought her to the lock up, she was too much intoxicated to walk. I gave her in charge to the lock up keeper and reported the case to the Sgt major. I enquired on the spot who she was or if she had any friends but could obtain no information
Witness Robert Tully
I am a police constable I know the deceased and have seen her drunk once. I was on sentry over the lockup last night, I heard someone screaming in the cell, and reported to the Sgt of the guard. He said it was a drunken woman. She was groaning most piteously about 1 o’clock and called for water. I went and told the lock up keeper that a woman was very poorly and wanted water. He asked me who I was but made no other answer. I told him who I was. At 2 o’clock I told St Nolan about the woman the second time. I went off duty and know nothing more of the case.
Robert Bord Tully
28 Nov 1854
Witness
James Sutherland – Doctor
I am a properly qualified medical practitioner I have made a post mortem examination of deceased. In removing the skull cap I found an immense an immense bluish patch underneath the dura mater when cut presented as an immense clot of coagulated blood so extensive as to have no doubts that it had occasioned death. There was a very slight quantity of serous fluid in the ventricles of the brain the membranes of the brain were very much congested. Nothing was in the stomach, but the lining of the stomach was intensely reddened similar to what is found in a confirmed drunkard, the other organs were generally healthy. I consider death caused by an extravasation of blood on the surface of the left hemisphere of the brain the result of confirmed intoxication.
James Sutherland MD
Witness
George Noxon – Lockup keeper at Ballarat
About 7 o’clock last night deceased was brought in custody to the lockup and put in a cell by herself. She was in a most beastly case of intoxication carried in by 3 or 4 men I visited her about half past 8 and again about 10 o’clock with the orderly officer. The 1st time she was frothing at the mouth and asked for a nobbler the 2nd time I saw her she was asleep I left water in the cell for her during the night I heard nothing of her during the night deceased has been in custody several times for drunkenness the last time was on the 22 of this month she had plenty of bedclothes Tully the constable may have called me during the night but I do not remember it. Some of the water I gave the deceased last night was left this morning.
George Nixon
