Mrs T Bastable

Mrs T Bastable had been visiting relations in Colwyn Bay when she vanished after going out for a walk on 3 November 1923.

She had left her 10 week old baby behind.

She had lived in Grasmere Avenue in Swinton, near Manchester.

It was noted that she had been ill for several weeks.

When she was last seen she had been wearing a brown corduroy velvet frock, over which she had a blue mackintosh, and that as such, had not been prepared for a journey.

When her husband was interviewed by the Sunday Post at his home in Manchester later the following year after the discovery of a woman’s body at Capel Curig, he said:

'It was on November 3 last year that my wife disappeared while staying with an aunt of hers. She had not been very well, and I was advised to send her to North Wales for a holiday. She went away quite happy with our baby boy. On that fateful afternoon between four and four-thirty, she said she was going to visit another aunt in the same road, but she never reached her destination. She had on her oldest clothes, a blue mackintosh, with red piping, a brown cord dress, and a red hat, and as far as we know had no money with her.

It was a great shock to me when I heard of her disappearance, and I have not been able to settle to anything since. We had been married only two years when this happened, and had just got settled in this new house.

My wife is a Welsh girl, with dark brown eyes and dark complexion, but she can speak very little of her native  language, so that if she got up in the mountains suffering from loss of memory she might not be able to make herself understood, for very little English is spoken there. We have tried every line of enquiry, but so far without success.

Only the other day I was sent for to see if I could identify a woman's skeleton which had been found near here. The clothing was entirely different, however. Then I heard of this discovery in Wales. I spoke with the police at Capel Curig over the phone. The details convinced me that it was not the body of my wife, so I am still waiting for news which may never come. Meantime my sister keeps house for me. My garden is neglected, and I cannot get interested in anything. Sometimes I feel I would rather have seen my wife on her deathbed than be left in this uncertainty as to her fate'.

The woman whose house in Old Trafford Mrs Bastable had lodged before she vanished, said that she had been employed as a manageress at Messrs Smallman, Piccadilly Restaurant.

She said:

'She was an extremely reticent woman, and although I knew she had relatives in the town, she rarely spoke about them, and never told me where they lived. Sometimes she would come down from her room and have ten minutes chat with me, but most of the time she kept herself to herself.

On June 28 she left here, saying she was going to spend a few days at Colwyn Bay. She added that I might expect her back on the Wednesday following. Since then I have not heard a word from her.

She had no trouble that I know of, nor to my knowledge any love affair'.