The Woodward case clearly shows that children always ran about the backs of carts and waggons, in this case picking up mangolds that were falling from poorly loaded carts. The Fox case is tragic but also obvious, given that the father – a railway worker – had his family in a cottage on the station land. The Earle case is a particularly long and detailed inquisition on a vehicular accident.
The Martin case asks why a doctor did not attend the baby, and mangolds appear again in the Champ case, the man cutting his hand in picking them, his lack of treatment leading to tetanus. Lack of immediate treatment also applies in the Saunders case, and tetanus applies again in the Billen case. There may seemingly be danger in hair-lotion applications, as witness the Horn-Elphinstone-Dalrymple case.
Some idea of life without state pension is given in the Thorne case, the 76 year old agricultural labourer who started work at 6.30am by walking four miles to pick turnips in the field all day.
Perhaps the most shocking occurrence of the year – the Snow case – took place at 4.30am on a misty August morning in the middle of Salisbury Plain, when a newspaper delivery car – perhaps racing in competition with others – ploughed without warning through a Battery of 95 Territorial soldiers who were marching back to Camp. There is an understandable degree of tetchiness in the inquest.
Noyce, Mary Charlton All Saints
Stokes, Alfred Orcheston St George
Horn-Elphinstone-Dalrymple, Helena Coombe Bissett/Kensington
Kilminster, George Bournemouth
Yeates, James Sutton Mandeville
Saunders, James Battersea/Wilton
Thorne, George Winterbourne Gunner
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Wiltshire Coroner's Inquests 1801-1920 