There are only 14 cases this year.
The death of Emma Gale was exacerbated by the treatment she received from her drunken husband, who, like many working men, took his wages down the local house instead of home.
Elizabeth Pope died after coming into a drunken brawl between her brother and her husband’s brother. The killing of John Pitt by Henry Bungay was a much clearer case, there being a number of witnesses to the animosity between these two old drunken men, and several who saw Bungay push Pitt into the fast-flowing Avon at Town Mill, nowadays just by St Thomas’ Square.
Two accidents feature young children. In one case Frederick Jackson, a toddler, fell into a boiling copper of water set in the ground behind the cottage he was staying at. In the other Frederick Sargent, a seven year old, had been working on the farm minding sheep since eight in the morning, and at seven in the evening ended a four-hour shift minding an elevator with a pony, by falling into the machinery.
Mary Ranger left her daughter on a corner of a street, sending her to buy some lard in a nearby shop, and then disappeared, throwing herself in the Avon. The husband states that she had recently weaned her child, and suffered bad heads afterwards, though she also dwelt upon the recent suicide of a neighbour.
The danger to men on the lines is again shown in the deaths of Charles and Frank Stacey, who were on the Great Western line between Salisbury and Wilton, watching and hearing a South Western train on the adjacent set of tracks, totally ignorant of the GW train about to kill them.
Jackson, Frederick West Grimstead
Stacey, Charles ; Stacey, Frank
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Wiltshire Coroner's Inquests 1801-1920 