Doris Ruth Child

Doris Ruth Child died from arsenic poisoning.

She had been engaged to marry an accounts clerk. He said that she had suffered from stomach pains for the previous two years, and that because of her hesitancy in consulting her own doctor that he advised her to visit a woman doctor.

The woman doctor who lived in Park Hill said that Doris Child came to see her in April 1950 suffering from leucorrhoea and that she prescribed her certain pessaries.

However, Doris Child complained of violent stomach pains and headaches on 4 May 1950 and later had a series of convulsions and was taken to St James's Hospital in Tredegar where she died.

It was noted that following her death a doctor from Tredegar made an application to her mother to carry out her post mortem in Cardiff where her body was then taken.

When a scientific officer at the forensic science laboratory examined her body, he said that he found arsenic present in all of her organs except the brain and gave her cause of death as being due to acute haemorrhage encephulo myelitis.

When the pathologist that carried out the post mortem was asked whether he thought that her cause of death could have been attributed to the use of arsenic pessaries, he said, 'I cannot exclude the possibility that the myelitis was due to the use of arsenic pessaries, even though no trace of arsenic was found in the brain. On the other hand, I am not willing to admit that myelitis was due to them. This case bears similarity to a known case of arsenic poisoning.

When the coroner heard the evidence, he commented that the doctor who had given instructions for Doris Child to be taken to Cardiff for her post mortem should have first reported her death to him in Tredegar before doing so. He said, 'You should always report a case of this kind to your local coroner. You admit that it was an obscure case and by having the post mortem made you moved the body out of another coroner's area'.

After the evidence was heard an open verdict was returned.