Fatal Overdose
O’Brien Street, a somewhat forgotten corner of
Adelaide was the home to a family tragedy that could have easily been
prevented.
The Thulborne family lived a happy existence in
their corner of the city. George Thulborne worked for the Adelaide Corporation
as a carter, and his wife, Mary was a stay at home mother of ten children.
On the morning of Tuesday the 27th of
August 1912, George set off for work, and Mary woke the children, readying them
for school. Some of the children had been a little ill, so Mary pulled down an
old bottle of medicine from a high shelf, with the intention of taking it to
the local chemist on Sturt Street to have it tested,
Trusting her memory of what was in the concoction, she left the bottle on the table in the dining room, and headed off to the chemist.
Trusting her memory of what was in the concoction, she left the bottle on the table in the dining room, and headed off to the chemist.
In the meantime, her two-year-old son, Maurice, who
had been playing outside, came back inside, saw the bottle, and drank from it.
Mary returned home not long after, but did not notice a small amount of the
contents of the bottle had disappeared.
Within a
couple of hours, Maurice was complaining of stomach pains, and by mid-afternoon
he had become unconscious.
Dr MacDonald was called, who did everything he could think of to try and work out was wrong with the toddler, and how to save him, but unfortunately by 9:45 pm that evening, young Maurice Alfred Thulborne had died.
Dr MacDonald was called, who did everything he could think of to try and work out was wrong with the toddler, and how to save him, but unfortunately by 9:45 pm that evening, young Maurice Alfred Thulborne had died.
The concoction Maurice had drunk from consisted of
a mixture of Oil of Aniseed, Peppermint Oil, Laudanum and Paregoric. A mixture
that would have smelt appealing to a two-year child, but was actually a toxic
mixture of alcohol and opium.
Laudanum was a popular remedy in Victorian times, which contained around ten percent powdered opium. In its mixture is several opioids, including morphine and codeine.
Paregoric was also a Victorian era medicine, which contained "honey, liquorice, flowers of Benjamin, and opium, camphor, oil of aniseed, salt of tartar and spirit of wine," and was used as a household remedy to treat, amongst other things, diarrhea, coughs and pain in children from teething[1].
Laudanum was a popular remedy in Victorian times, which contained around ten percent powdered opium. In its mixture is several opioids, including morphine and codeine.
Paregoric was also a Victorian era medicine, which contained "honey, liquorice, flowers of Benjamin, and opium, camphor, oil of aniseed, salt of tartar and spirit of wine," and was used as a household remedy to treat, amongst other things, diarrhea, coughs and pain in children from teething[1].
Maurice Alfred Thulborne was buried in the Catholic
section of the West Terrace Cemetery.
[1] Boyd, EM & MacLauchlan, ML, 1944, The
Expectorant Action of Paregoric, Canadian Medical Association Journal, April
1944, Vol. 50, page 344
