Age: 33
Sex: male
Date: 14 Dec 1941
Place: Farringdon Corner, Exeter-Sidmouth Road
Alfred Tangye was run over on the Exeter to Sidmouth Road at Farringdon Corner.
He was run over by a car that stop and helped him, but it was thought that he had been injured before and that when he was run over he had already been lying in the road.
He died just as the Exeter City Police ambulance arrived.
The man that had been driving the car that had run Alfred Tangye over said that he had left Exeter by car at 12.25am on the Sunday with a nurse and another man and that near Farringdon Corner the car ran over something, saying that he felt two bumps but didn't see anything. He said that he then pulled up and found Alfred Tangye lying in the road groaning in a semi-conscious state.
The inquest heard that the man that ran Alfred Tangye over was certain that Alfred Tangye had not been standing when he was run over.
The man said that they had been to a dance and that they had had a bottle of wine between five people at dinner at about 8pm and two brown ales in the restaurant and that he was sober at the time he ran Alfred Tangye over.
The nurse that had been in the car said that she felt that Alfred Tangye must have been injured before they hit him.
It was also said that Alfred Tangye might have been hit beforehand by something heavy.
The other man in the car said that when he wiped blood off of Alfred Tangye, some of it had already dried and would not come off.
When a pathologist carried out a post-mortem on Alfred Tangye, he said that his injuries were particularly severe and that some of them could not have been caused by the car that later ran over him.
When the coroner summed up he said that Alfred Tangye died from multiple injuries received on the road and that the evidence did not point to the car that stopped being the car that was responsible for knocking him over and that it appeared that something had previously happened to Alfred Tangye and an open verdict was returned.
see www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
see Western Morning News - Wednesday 24 December 1941, p4
see Western Times - Friday 19 December 1941
see P Western Morning News - Wednesday 24 December 1941
see Penrith Observer - Tuesday 30 December 1941
see Western Morning News - Tuesday 16 December 1941
see Exeter and Plymouth Gazette - Friday 19 December 1941