Alfred George Bessemer

George Bessemer was found hanged in his billiard room.

He was a civil engineer.

Just before midnight on the Sunday night a friend of his had left Alfred Bessemer sitting by the fire asleep in a chair. He said that ten minutes later he heard a cry and hurried downstairs and found Alfred Bessemer suspended by the neck in the loop of a cord used for opening and closing a skylight in the conservatory.

His body was hanging from the roof just in front of the doorway leading from the billiard room into the conservatory.

His brother said that he thought that it had been an accident saying that Alfred Bessemer was a very sleepy man and that he thought that while he was going into the conservatory, half-asleep, to shut the door that he had tripped over the mat and fallen with his neck into the loop of the cord. The man that found Alfred Bessemer illustrated the position that he had found him in, indicating that his feet were firmly on the ground and that his knees were bent.

A doctor that carried out his post mortem stated that there was a discoloured mark one third of an inch wide passing under the neck and behind his ears. He said that there was no fracture to his skull or dislocation to his neck. He concluded that his cause of death was strangulation.

The Coroner noted to the doctor that it was a peculiar case and the doctor agreed that it was.

Alfred Bessemer was described as a healthy man with no financial difficulties and with no other troubles of any kind.

The jury returned an open verdict adding that there was not sufficient evidence to show how Alfred Bessemer had come by his death.