electrocuted at Miramar
William, aged 24, was driving a lorry belonging to his employer John Keir along Evans Bay Road on 3rd November 1906. He was carting timber from Miramar wharf to Eason’s Mill at Kilbirnie. He noticed a wire lying on the road. To prevent it getting tangled with the cart’s wheels, and not knowing it was live, grasped it with both hands and was immediately killed. The wire carried a charge of 2000 volts.
William Weldon, also a carter and present at the accident said that he had noticed that the wire across the road had been sagging for months before the accident. It was thought that a load of furniture had touched the wire and bought it to the ground.
At the time of William’s death, his effects totalled £7:0:0 and was owed £1:8:0 in wages.
The Public Trustee acting as administrator for William, “his relatives being resident outside of the colony”, made demand on John Keir for the payment of £105 13s in compensation. Mr Keir’s insurance company paid the sum which was forwarded to William’s widow in Lewisham, Sydney by bank transfer. Mr Keir’s then sought to recover this amount from the Electric Light Company on the ground that the accident was due to their negligence. The Company refused to pay and an action was taken in the Supreme Court.
The company blamed a cart laden with furniture as causing the wire to be pulled from a safe height and that the accident was caused by William’s contributory negligence in handling the wire.
His Honour Mr Justice Button gave judgement on 21 November 1907 in favour of John Keir as it was in his opinion that the Electric Light Company had not maintained the wire at such a height above the roadway to prevent vehicles from touching it.
William, also known as William Corfield Wilson and William Wilson was born in Queensland in 1882 and married Florence Cole in 1904 in NSW. Their son Russell John was born the same year. She remarried to Arthur Wrigley in 1912 and he was killed in WWI in 1915.
This headstone reads “erected by his friends”. William is the only interment in this plot.
Plot: ROM CATH/O/101
