Mary Jane Cole

Mary Jane Cole died from drinking whisky with sodium cyanide in it.

The inquest returned a verdict of suicide.

She had come home for supper on 12 April 1934 between 8pm and 9pm after which she and her husband started to drink some whisky from a bottle that Mary Cole had bought, but her husband said that when he tasted it it burned his tongue. He said that he then told his wife, 'Taste the whisky, but for ---- sake don't drink it'. However, he said that she drank it and was dead within two minutes.

It was thought that she had got the cyanide off of a man that she had met in the smoke room of a pub earlier that day who used to work as a night watchman at a factory where they had cyanide and spirits of salt. He said that he had brought some home about twelve months earlier to destroy a wasps' nest. However, he said that he had not given Mary Cole any cyanide.

The police said that their analyst had found some dust in Mary Cole's handbag that was the same substance that they had found in the whisky.

The police said that only one chemist in Coventry had even a sample of that particular poison and he had no record of any sales.

Mary Cole was married to an unemployed sand blaster.

Her husband said that she had changed after having had an operation and said that she seemed to prefer a gay irresponsible life.