FALL UNDER A TRAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23703, 10 January 1939, Page 16

FALL UNDER A TRAIN

DEATH SIX HOURS LATER DR C. D. READ BEREAVED (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Dec. 15. In tragic circumstances, Dr Charles D. Read, formerly of Dunedin and now a well-known London surgeon and. consulting gynaecologist has lost his wife. On the morning of December 13, Mrs Read, whose age was 38, left her home at Highgate to go on a shopping expedition—expecting to be back in time for luncheon. She said goodbye to her two little sons, David (aged 6), and John (aged 3), She was seen on the platform at Chalk Farm Tube Station a few seconds before a train came in. “As it entered the station, she fell forward under the wheels,” said a porter. “ The driver had no chance to stop.” At the time Dr Read was at Chelsea Hospital for Women, where he is surgeon. As he was engaged with a patient a nurse touched him on the shoulder and whispered: “ Your wife, doctor —she has met with an accident. They want you at once.”

“Very well, I’ll be along in a moment,” he said quietly. On arrival at Hampstead General Hospital, where the gravely injured woman had been taken, Dr Read consulted with specialists who had been called in, and a blood transfusion was made. For an hour and a-half doctors fought for her life in the operating theatre, but their efforts were fruitless. Death occurred six hours after the accident. Mrs Read was formerly Miss Mabyn Gill, only daughter of the late Dr J. W. Gill, of Cornwall. The marriage took place in 1929. A verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was recorded this morning at St. Pancras inquest. Dr Read said that his wife suffered from headaches and was sometimes very upset. About a year ago she took a sedative drug in more than a medicinal dose. The driver of the train, which struck Mrs Read, William Thomas Corbett, said that he was a car’s length in the platform when he first saw her and she “ lunged forward.” The coroner, Mr Bentley Purchase, said that a note which Mrs Read left indicated that she had contemplated suicide. The note was written on three cards.

Sir Bernard Spilsbury said that death was due to shock and loss of blood following multiple injuries. Mrs Read was a perfectly healthy woman.