WOMAN’S MORPHIA CRAVING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17570, 22 June 1925, Page 12

WOMAN’S MORPHIA CRAVING.

CORONER AND DOCTOR S CONDUCT. (Special to the “Star.") LONDON, April 29. A woman’s craving for morphia and alcohol was described at an inquest yesterday on Mrs Augusta Mary Madeline Coke, forty-two, a widow, who died ;,t 64, Claverton Street, Pimlico, S.W. Mrs Coke, it was stated, had a life interest in an estate producing about £7OO a year. A Salisbury nurse, Edith Chapman, who was sent to London to attend Mrs Coke, said a. supply of morphia on doctors prescriptions came to her from the Army and Navy Stores every few days. Morphia bottles were hidden under the scat of a chesterfield. Mrs Coke said she had been having three bottles of brandy a day. Dr IT. B. Y\ cir said death was due to i coma from chronic morphia poisoning, local peritonitis, and pneumonia. Mrs Coke had kidney disease. 2,781. GRAINS SUPPLIED. Mi* Leonard Johnson, chemist at, the Army and Navy Stores, said that from June 1922 to May 1924 they received 67 prescriptions from T>r Hemming, <-f Bishop’s Waltham, Hants, authorising the supply of morphia to Mrs Coke, and from April 1924. to April of this year Dr Hardy, <»f Bournemouth, sent thirty-six similar prescriptions. The coroner (Mr Ingleby Oddie) said that in all 2,751 grains of morphia were supplied. Dr 12. W. Hardy, of Bournemouth, said that Mrs Coke had been taking morphia for fifteen years, lie had not seen her since the beginning of June last, when she left Bournemouth, but had sent prescriptions for regular supplies of morphia. He made no charges. The Coroner: Do you approve of your conduct?—ln the circumstances I think so, because she was a woman who had been taking the drug for fifteen years, and the amount she required was known. I consented to give it for a time, but I told her it would not go on for long unless she came back to Bournemouth. She has written twice since Christmas saying that she was coming back. “REPREHENSIBLE.” Do you approve of sending her prescriptions over a long period like a year without having seen her, the result being that she became a morphia maniac?—Yes, I do. It is a most reprehensible Ihing to do. My impression was that you were doing it to get money?—Not at alk If you refuse to supply morphia maniacs they die; they generally take their lives or do something desperate. The coroner described the case as a miserable one, and remarked that Dr Hardy seemed thoroughly contented with his own conduct in the matter. He (Mr Oddie) was by no m:ans satisfied. He recorded a verdict of Death by Misadventure.