LIVED ALONE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19841, 16 May 1927, Page 10

LIVED ALONE

WOMAN RECLUSE’S DEATH A BROTHER’S EVIDENCE. LONDON, April 20. Natural causes was the verdict at th« inquest yesterday at Wimbledon on Miss Alice Smale, 67, who was found dead in her house at Pelham-road, Wimbledon. Miss Smale, who had been a recluse for some years, had not been seen for about three weeks. Unable to get any reply to his knocking, a postman informed the police, and it was then found that the house was locked. The woman’s brother got in by breaking the kitchen window, - and found his sister dead in the bath-room.

Joseph Smale said that his sister was very eccentric. She had lived alone ever since 1919, when her father died, and kept the house bolted and barred. “I have tried to get in several times recently, but without success. I visited her occasionally, but sometimes she would not let me in.” At times she would keep him waiting on the step for hours, shouting occasionally, “All right, I’m coming.”

Medical evidence was that the woman had been dead about a fortnight. Death was due to pneumonia of about four or five days’ standing. If the woman had had attendance there would have been a good chance of her re covering.