The mother of the child had pushed the body further inward in her endeavors to remove it and had wounded the canal.
Schmiegelow reports a foreign body forced into the drum-cavity, followed by rough extraction, great irritation, tetanus, and death; and there are on record several cases of fatal meningitis, induced by rough endeavors to extract a body from the external ear.
In the Therapeutic Gazette, August 15, 1896, there is a translation of the report of a case by Voss, in which a child of five pushed a dry pea in his ear.

Four doctors spent several days endeavoring to extract it, but only succeeded in pushing it in further.

It was removed by operation on the fifth day, but suppuration of the tympanic cavity caused death on the ninth day.
Barclay reports a rare case of ensnared aural foreign body in a lady, aged about forty years, who, while "picking" her left ear with a so-called "invisible hair-pin" several hours before the consultation, had heard a sudden "twang" in the ear, as if the hair-pin had broken.
And so, indeed, it had; for on the instant she had attempted to jerk it quickly from the ear the sharp extremity of the inner portion of its lower prong sprang away from its fellow, penetrated the soft tissues of the floor of the external auditory canal, and remained imbedded there, the separated end of this prong only coming away in her grasp.

Every attempt on her part to remove the hair-pin by traction on its projecting prong--she durst not force it INWARD for fear of wounding the drumhead--had served but to bury the point of the broken prong more deeply into the flesh of the canal, thereby increasing her suffering.
Advised by her family physician not to delay, she forthwith sought advice and aid.

On examination, it was found that the lower prong of the "invisible hair-pin" had broken at the outer end of its wavy portion, and seemed firmly imbedded in the floor of the auditory canal, now quite inflamed, at a point about one-third of its depth from the outlet of the canal.