Biography

Alias Joseph Berry.

The deceased was employed on the mine and had charge of a shift. At the inquest, Patrick Dineen deposed that he was a miner working at the No. 2 level in the Vivien Gold Mine and was in the north drive when the accident to Joseph Berry occurred. He and Berry were lighting two holes. "He lit one and it spit and I lit one but it went out again. I went back to light it again and it went out a second time. Berry then went back to spit it and was there till he was shot. I told him twice to come away, that he was stopping there too long. I rang the accident signal and went back to do all I could for Berry. It is not often that a fuse has to be re-lit. I had been working with deceased for about a fortnight and consider he was a very careful man. He was conscious when I first saw him after the accident, and he said the pain was awful and he reckoned he was settled. He was a practical miner and I consider he knew his business."

Richard Russell Frost, Acting District Medical Officer, said that on arrival he saw Joseph Berry and found him suffering from a compound fracture of the right thigh bone and a number of wounds in different parts of the body. He died an hour and a half after his arrival on the mine. In his opinion, the deceased died of shock and haemorrhage.

George Munro, a mine worker at the Vivien, helped the deceased out of the skip after the accident and said that the deceased told him it was his own fault, that he had waited too long.

William Deeble, Inspector of Mines, considered the accident was due to the deceased going back to the charge.

The jury returned a verdict that Hilding Aberg came to his death by an explosion of gelignite at the Vivien Mine, caused through inattention on the part of deceased to the Mines Regulation Act ... and that no blame was attachable to the Management.

The deceased is buried in Plot 17, Section D, Lawlers Cemetery.