Sad death of a little boy

By Lyn Forde – President/Research Officer of St Marys & District Historical Society Inc.

IN July 1898 an enquiry was held into the death of Thomas Henry Coster aged six who was killed when thrown from a buggy. Thomas was the son of Frank and Marion Coster (Nee: Mackay). Frank was born in Young, NSW in 1866. In 1887 he married Marion at the home of the Reverend at Woy Woy. At the time of the enquiry Frank was in WA. The enquiry was held by Coroner John King Lethbridge J P, at the Nepean Cottage Hospital. At the enquiry his mother Marion said that she was the wife of Frank Coster and lived on the York Estate at Penrith and on Tuesday afternoon last she was driving into Penrith with her three children and the road was very bad and full of stumps and about a mile or more from home she turned to go on a new road when a bird flew up and spooked the horse. The buggy went over a stump and jolted her out. Hanging onto the reins she was dragged along the road for some little distance and was a little stunned, but she saw the horse running away with the children in the buggy. She said she followed as well as she could and called to the children to jump out. One of them got out over the back seat and another over the side and they didn’t get hurt, but Thomas jumped out and must have got caught in the wheel and he called for the little girls to come and get him out but the buggy went along a little further and capsized. The horse broke away and she found Thomas hanging over the axel, caught between the wheel and the body of the buggy and he was quite insensible and there was a deep cut on the side of his head that was probably made by the wheel. She said that she shifted the wheel back and got Thomas clear and a woman named Mrs Giddy came to her assistance. Thomas was then taken by her and Mr James Vinn to Dr Pym’s surgery and upon examination Dr Pym ordered his removal to the Nepean Cottage Hospital where he died. Frederick Andrews a grazier residing on York Estate said that he knew Thomas Henry Coster and from something he heard he went out near Mr Buckland’s place and saw where the horse started from, and he saw a stump about three feet high and the marks of the wheel right up the stump and a piece of the top broken off. He said that the horse kept on the road to the corner of Mrs Giddy’s fence and then turned to the left and across the paddock all through several stumps and onto Enfield Street and along the wire fence until the wheel hit a stump that turned the buggy over. He saw blood on the off-hind wheel of the buggy and later saw Thomas in the hospital. His opinion was that Thomas was caught between the break and the wheel that caused his death. Fred said that he knew the horse was a very quiet one and he had seen Mrs Coster driving it often and he believed it would have been an accident. Dr Pym said that he was a duly qualified medical practitioner residing in High Street, Penrith and the deceased was brought to his surgery, and he immediately ordered him to the hospital where Thomas was examined by him and Dr Campbell and they found him to be suffering from shock and unconscious. A portion of the skull was missing, fractured from the forehead across the temple to behind the ear and exposing the brain and membranes about four inches. His face and wound was covered with mud with the pupil of the left eye affected. His left arm and leg was very badly bruised and covered with mud and there were minor bruises on his body. His summation was that Thomas had evidently been dragged along the ground for some considerable distance and his opinion is that in the course of motion, being suspended from the trap, he must have received the blow that fractured his skull. Thomas never rallied and died at 4.30pm Wednesday morning with the cause of death being fracture of the skull, compression of the brain and shock. The coroner’s finding was that “From the evidence, the deceased died at the Nepean Cottage Hospital on the 6th of July from injuries accidentally received by being thrown from a buggy.” Thomas was born in 1892 at Hillgrove in NSW and is buried at St Stephen the Martyr Anglican Cemetery, Penrith. Marion moved the family to Cue in Western Australia in 1906 where Frank was working. Frank died at Topsham Hospital in Stirling Street, Perth in December that year from Pulmonary Tuberculosis. In the Western Mail newspaper in Perth: “The funeral of Frank Coster, late mine manager of Cue took place on December 6th and was largely attended. The cortege proceeded from 89 Murray Street Perth to the Anglican portion of the Karrakatta Cemetery with the Rev. Mr Marshall officiating at the graveside. Pallbearers were Messrs: T Bath M.L.A., M F Troy M.L.A., J B Holman M.L.A., and E E Heitmann M.L.A. Numerous wreaths and floral tributes and several letters and telegrams were received. Thomas’s mother Marion was born in Queensland in 1869. She died in October in 1964 of Inhalational Pneumonia and Cerebral Ischemia (Pneumonia causing stroke) in Royal Perth Hospital and was cremated at the Crematorium in Karrakatta in the Crematorium Rose Garden. (Some History of mining in Cue. Established in 1893, Cue was once the centre of the Murchison Goldfields boasting a population of around 10,000. It began around the 1890’s when an Aboriginal prospector named Governor found a tenounce nugget at Cuddingwarra about nine miles west of present-day Cue. Encouraged by this find Michael Fitzgerald travelling with two Aboriginal people found gold at the present Kintore Blow on New Years Day in 1892. Kintore Blow is in central Cue close to what is now Austin Street/Great Northern Highway and in the first week yielded 260 ounces of gold. Tom Cue, Fitzgerald’s partner travelled the 80 km’s to nearby Nannine and registered the claim and it is probably for this reason, that the town was later named after Tom Cue.)

Sources: Nepean Times 9th July 1898 – Page 6, Family Search (Mormon website), NSW Births Deaths & Marriages, Ancestry, Western Mail- Perth, Saturday 15 December 1906, page 15, Trove, NSW Australian Registers of Coroner’s Inquest 1821-1937.

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