VPRS 24/PO
Box 30
Item 107
Catherine Fletcher
Aged 5 years 1855 Ballarat
Inquest held on 10 Nov 1855
Jurors
John Irwin
William Monteath
William John Arnold
William McBurney
Henry Dimond
Thomas Santhey x
Alexander McCrae
Henry Colquhoun
John George
Thomas Friedrich Wiskins
Christopher Thomas Howe
James Patterson Rotterdam x Al of Ballarat
Witness
William Fletcher
I am the father of the deceased but I left her at home in mu tent as I usually and frequently did before. About 10 o’clock am on the 7th inst ……. I returned home about an hour after the last witness Daniel Carey and I saw my wife and him over the body of the child who was quite dead. Lying outside the tent where Daniel Carey had found it with a rug thrown over it.
Witness Daniel Carey
On 7th inst about 4 o’clock pm I returned home form looking after a hors which I drove into the stockyard and there saw a smoke of a fire within about five yards of our tent I ran and on examining it I found the body of the deceased lying in the belly quite dead and much of the body was charred. On examining the tent with Robert Cane of the Lucky Hole Hotel we could not find anything burned in the tent nor any source of fire but about a shovel full of fire in fireplace. We found some of the clothes of deceased burned nearly to a cinder at the threshold of door outside. I left the child in the tent quite well about 2 o’clock am. The mother of the deceased had left the tent about an hour previous to me to sell her milk.
