DEATH IN LONELY HUT.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

DEATH IN LONELY HUT.

AFFLUENCE TO POVERTY. PRICE OP INFATUATION. How » woman of gentle birth left her home in Brighton to live with one of her father'g coachmen and died on a atraw bed in a shack described as "totally unfit for human habitation," was told at an inquest at South Benfleet. The woman, Ada Olivia Attree, aged about 85—her coachman friend, now aged about 70, and awaiting the old age pension, could not state it more definitely when giving evidence—had died from pneumonia accelerated by neglect. She was found lying across a straw mattress, clad only in a dirty cotton frock, terribly emaciated. No doctor had been called. But in the old days, according to William Stapley, the coachman who lived with her in the out-of-the-way Essex Tillage of New Thundersley, she had been in good circumstances. "As her father's coachman," he said, "I used to take her about to shows all over the country. The Attree family were well known in Brighton then. Among other positions filled by her father was the chairmanship of Brighton Guardians and of the Extra Mural Cemetery, where the family vault it." Then the old coachman, with a tremor in his voice, went on to tell how years ago his own wife left him. "I knew Miss Attree's circumstances at the time and she knew mine, so she came to live with me," he said, adding that he and the woman had never lived as husband and wife/ Prior to coming to New Thundersley they had lived at Burgess Hill, in Sussex. Miss Attree had a small income from her father's estate, and worried a great deal because she could not get into communication with her sisters. The constable who saw Miss Attree dead on her atraw bed said the hut in which she and Stapley lived was only 12 feet square. Down the centre was a partition, on each side of which were tumbledown beds, the mattresses filled with straw. "It was a filthy place. No human being should have occupied it. Stapley and the dead woman appeared to have had only one cup and plate betweeu them." Finding that Miss Attree ha.l died from pneumonia, the coroner added, "Obviously the woman was living in deplorable and appalling circumstances which no doubt accelerated death."