LOCAL NEWS.
SHOCKING DEATH OF A SWEEP. – An inquest was held yesterday afternoon, before Dr. Birt Davies, Coroner, touching the death of Benjamin Stych, a chimney sweep, forty years of age, who resided in Deritend. It appeared from the evidence that the deceased left home on the afternoon of Tuesday last, for the purpose of sweeping a chimney at a house in Sherlock Street. As he could not sweep the chimney with the machine, the deceased got up it, and a boy named Greatorex, who was in the room, heard him at work in the chimney. Suddenly the boy heard him cease working, and looking up the chimney could not see him. The boy called his father, and another sweep named John Eccles was sent for, and after removing the fire grate they found the deceased in the mouth of the chimney quite dead. He was taken to the Queen’s Hospital. Mr. Thompson, house surgeon, afterwards made a post-mortem examination of the body of the deceased. He was of opinion that he was suffering from disease of the heart, and died from syncopal asphyxia. – The jury returned a verdict “That the deceased died by the visitation of God.”
(Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 13th February 1864)
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