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Clarice Edith Wragg

Age: 39

Sex: female

Date: 11 Jun 1947

Place: Southlands, Northdown Park Avenue, Margate, Kent

Clarice Edith Wragg was found dead in her bed on the morning of 11 June 1947 by her mother.

A doctor suggested that she might have died from a bad dream.

Analysis failed to reveal a cause of death.

It was suggested that she might have sufferd from a bloodclot in the brain during a bad dream, or that a piece of fluff or somthing similar might have resulted in a spasm in her throat, causing death.

She had eaten icecream the night before with her mother and two friends after having attended choir practice.

Her mother said, 'She was the happiest girl in the world, she had never had a dity's illness'.

At the opening of the inquest on 15 June 1947, after it was heard that her post-mortem had failed to show her cause of death, the coroner adjourned proceedings so that some of her organs could be sent to Hendon police laboratory in order to rule out the possibility of poisoning.

The doctor that carried out her post-mortem examination said that he found Clarice Wragg's body to be that of a perfectly healthy person, with no sign of any injury or corrosive poisoning. He added that there was nothing pointing to a cause of death and that he saw nothing to indicate that her death was not due to natural causes. He said, 'It is just possible that the cause might be coronary thrombosis precipitated by an unpleasant dream. At the time I thought that the coronary arteries were so little affected that that could not be so. It Is possible, however, that there was more atheroma than I thought. A less likely cause might have been that a piece of fluff or something similar affected the glottis'.

He said that his opinion was that her cause of death was natural, and noted that in rare cases a perfectly natural death sometimes left no discoverable cause.

After the inquest resumed on 23 June 1947, the coroner returned a verdict of natural causes.


*map pointers are rough estimates based on known location details as per Place field above.

see www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

see Thanet Advertiser - Tuesday 24 June 1947

see Dundee Courier - Tuesday 24 June 1947

see The People - Sunday 15 June 1947

see Shields Daily News - Monday 23 June 1947

see Thanet Advertiser - Tuesday 24 June 1947