Everyone’s talking about the cost of electricity, but what about the price you pay when you get struck by electricity. I’m talking about death caused by lightning strikes. I told a version of this story on radio 4WK.

Over a century ago there were horrible deaths from lightning strikes all around Warwick and the Darling Downs, and for one man that would have been a merciful way to go.

In 1907 an orphan boy Herbert Webb, aged eighteen, was killed by lightning while planting corn at Emu Vale. The lightning struck him on the head, singed his hair, travelled the left side of the body, scorching his clothing, and down to the feet which were badly burned, and almost blew his boots off. Young Herbert was buried at Warwick cemetery without anyone ever knowing the name of his parents.

In 1915 Thomas Hugh Welsh, a farmer from Durikai on the Inglewood line, was struck dead by lightning. Welsh was out fishing when a storm rolled in, so he set off for home. But before he got far, he was struck by lightning and killed. He left a widow and three children, the youngest of whom was only ten days old. He was a grandson and great-grandson of sea captains. Some may say that this proves that water and electricity don’t mix.

Two men were struck and killed on the same day in different incidents on the 21st of November in 1920.

William Thomas Steele was killed by lightning at Wheatvale just west of Warwick. He was struck while standing on a dray loading it up with wheat sheaves. The lightning killed Steele, set fire to the wheat, and the horses galloped away.

That same day at Southbrook near Pittsworth, John Anderson was also fatally struck by lightning. There was no rain when a flash of lightning came out of the blue, instantly killing Anderson and the horse he was riding, making it painfully seem that he had indeed been called to God.

In 1923 Thomas Bourke was struck and killed by lightning near Yangan just outside of Warwick. He took shelter under a tree, a few moments later the tree was struck and Bourke was killed instantly. His mother Johanna from County Tipperary, Ireland, never recovered from the shock of her son’s electrifying death, and she herself died just months later.

Bourke had sheltered under the tree with a younger man, and his name was William Henry Mauch from Yangan.

Mauch had a brother Herbert who served in the army during the First World War. Herbert had been killed in action at Hell Fire Corner on Menin Road in 1917 after he turned his horses about and rode into intense shellfire to help a fallen mate, but he himself was then blown to bits.

Another brother Ivan would die suddenly of heart failure in 1940 while serving in the army in the early days of the Second World War.

But back to our William Mauch who was sheltering under the tree. Mauch was worried that it wasn’t safe under the tree and so left just moments before the lightning strike. Even so, Mauch was rendered unconscious and paralysed in one arm and both legs. Mauch recovered only for an even worse fate to await.

It was in 1937 at Goondiwindi that he met a terrible death. Mauch had worked late one night and was locking up his cordial factory. That’s when neighbours living two hundred yards away heard fearful screams and a thud, thud, thud, coming from the factory. Rushing to the scene they found Mauch dead and his body shockingly mutilated. His clothes had got caught in the machinery belting and he was being hurled round and round smashing into a heavy cross beam on every turn.

Four years later, the factory itself suffered an unceremonious death. The building in Bowen Street in Goondiwindi was completely gutted by fire. Exploding tubes of ammonia kept a large crowd of onlookers at a safe distance and spelled the end of any lasting business memorial to William Mauch.

But you’ve got to feel for Minnie Mauch who was the mother of those three young men from Yangan. It all proved too much for Minnie who herself was struck down and died not long after her third son passed away.

Given the way two of the Mauch brothers died, you’ve got to think that maybe being struck by lightning would have been a small mercy.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON RADIO 4WK.

Photo credits:
Darling Downs Storms – Phill on Flickr 2016.
John Anderson memorial, Drayton and Toowoomba cemetery – Patricia Taylor, 2019 Find a Grave.
Mauch’s Cottage, 154 Strudwicks Road, Yangan, 1996 – State Library of Queensland.
H.V. Mauch in The Queenslander Pictorial, supplement to The Queenslander, 1915 – State Library of Queensland.
Ivan Robert Mauch, WW2 enlistment photo – National Archives of Australia.
William Henry Mauch memorial, Goondiwindi cemetery – Ann Sainsbury, 2019 Find a Grave.