CORONER’S COURT

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27736, 13 August 1955, Page 9

CORONER’S COURT

WOMAN FOUND UNCONSCIOUS VERDICT OF NATURAL DEATH “There might have been some suggestion of foul play, but there is not the slightest evidence of that,” said the Coroner (Mr Rex C. Abernethy, S.M.) yesterday when he concluded an inquest into the death of Nellie Winifred Stalker, aged 67, a widow. “I thought it advisable that there should be an inquest into the circumstances in which this old lady died,” he said. “I find that she did from natural causes, but there Was some suspicion of what was a perfectly innocent happening.”

Detective-Sergeant A. B. Tate conducted the case for the police. George Maxwell Edmonds, a fishmonger, said that Mrs Stalker was his wife’s mother. She lived alone in a flat at 22 Stoneyhurst street. On the afternoon of July 17 he and his wife went to visit Mrs Stalker. The flat was shut and a Saturday newspaper and milk had not been taken inside. Witness climbed through the fire escape into the flat and found Mrs Stalker lying on her back in her bedroom. She was dressed. There blood below her left ear, on her left cheek and on the carpet s.

James Arthur Munro, a house surgeon at the Christchurch Hospital, said that when Mrs Stalker was brought to the hospital she was unconscious. She had a cut two centimetres the full depth of the skin in the back of her head and abrasions on her face and- forehead. She died at 4.45 a.m. on July 18. Colin Thomas Bushby Pearson, a pathologist, gave evidence that Mrs Stalker’s injuries were consistent with her having fallen in a seizure and striking her head against the dressing table in the bedroom. The Coroner’s verdict was that Mrs Stalker died from a cerebral hemorrhange which was caused when she fell and struck her head against her dressing table. Death of Fisherman An inquest into the death of Sydney Allan Gracia, aged 33, a fisherman, of Akaroa, whose body was recovered from Lyttelton harbour on July 19. was concluded. The Coroner found that Gracia died on June 16, or 17 at Lyttelton, the cause of death being drowning. William Francis Tissiman, a sailmaker, of Lyttelton, said that on the night of June 16 he was a guest at the Mitre Hotel. Lyttelton, where Gracia was also a boarder. Between 11 p.m. and midnight Gracia decided to return to the trawler Moerangi and as he had been drinking heavily witness and his brother helped him aboard. “It is possible that intoxication might have had a good deal to do with this man’s death,” said the Coroner, “but I am not entitled to find that positively since one does not know the exact time that his death occurred.” The case was conducted for the police by Sergeant R. E. Marriott.