Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Wednesday 13 January 1909
The Sleep of Death
Unknown Suffocated In Lime Kiln
How an unknown man, evidently a unit of the unemployed, sought the warmth and shelter of the limekilns at Levitt Hagg, near Conisborough, and then was suffocated by the sulphurous fumes, was told at an inquest held on the body at Conisboro’yesterday.
The evidence, taken Mr. F. E. Nicholson, Coroner, was to the effect that Sunday the deceased was observed by a youth named George Chester, sitting on a shovel near the fire in the kiln. On Monday when Tom Beckett, quarryman, of Warmsworth, was “firing up” at the kiln, he found the deceased lying dead close to the fire.
Dr. James Forster, who had made a post mortem examination of the deceased, described the superficial burns he found on the body, which was fairly well nourished, though the stomach was empty. In his opinion death was due to the effects of the poisonous fumes of the fires.
P.-c. Brearley, stationed at Conisborough, who had searched the body, said that the deceased was penniless.
The jury returned a verdict that the man was accidentally poisoned from the fumes of the fire.