Lone schoolboy fell from train in the middle of the night

1919 – Unaccompanied schoolboy Howard Tidbury was taking the overnight train home to Blackall for Christmas in mid-December. He was 11 or 12 years of age.

He was boarding at Rockhampton’s Sisters of Mercy Convent’s school for boys.

The school’s sister-in-charge had asked Mary Hole, the mother of  four other students, who was also travelling on the train with her sons, to “keep an eye to him’.

This she did, keeping him with her in a “short’’ sleeping carriage when they boarded the mail train on Monday, December 16. It left the station at a quarter-to-seven that evening.

The carriage contained six bunks, and as there was another passenger in the carriage, Tidbury shared a bunk with one the Hole boys, George.

Early on the morning of December 17, Tidbury asked Mrs Hole where he could go to the toilet. She got up and showed him, he went and returned.

A little later she saw him get up and leave again, in the direction of the lavatory.

When, after ten to 15 minutes he had not returned, the concerned woman went looking and then raised the alarm with travellers in the adjacent carriage.

Still, no-one could find the boy. It wasn’t until much later that afternoon the someone on the goods train coming from Rockhampton spotted his unconscious body about five foot from the rail line near a siding at Yamala, 17 miles out of Emerald.

There was blood coming out of Howard’s ears, nose and mouth. He did not regain consciousness and later died at the Emerald Hospital.

An inquiry found that the train would have been travelling about 25 miles per hour at the time he somehow left it.

“A fall from a train travelling at that speed was sufficient to cause death.”

Magistrate’s inquiry

No-one could discover why Howard ventured out of the carriage in the dark of night.

No-one was blamed for the sad death, but imagine the guilt which Mrs Hole must have felt, returning home with her four healthy sons.

Tidbury is buried in the Emerald cemetery.

Sources: Morning Bulletin, Thursday 18 December 1919, p8, Saturday 20 December 1919, p8 and Tuesday 10 February 1920, p5