Joan Wrangell

Joan Wrangell was found dead in a house in Hans Road, Belgravia on 7 September 1958.

She died from barbiturate poisoning but the Coroner said that he was not satisfied that the result was a deliberate act on her part and an open verdict was returned.

A policeman that called at her home said that he found Joan Wrangell lying in bed and that in a wardrobe he found a writing pad and a note threatening suicide. The writing was identified by her brother as being in Joan Wrangell's handwriting.

However, the Coroner noted that the letter was not in a prominent position and suggested that the letter had referred to her former accommodation in Beaufort Gardens. He said, 'I am not satisfied that the note refers to her death'.

A Scotland Yard laboratory analyst said that Joan Wrangell had consumed 6 grains of barbiturates and that a normal dose would have been one and a half grains.

Her brother, a company director in Radlett, Hertfordshire said that Joan Wrangell had had both legs amputated as a result of a train accident two years earlier and had suffered from fits of depression.

A Major that lived in Wellington Court in Chelsea said that Joan Wrangell had been a voluntary patient in a nervous illness hospital nine months earlier after which she had gone to live in Beaufort Gardens in South Kensington. He said that Joan Wrangell had been happy there at first but that when water started coming into her room she became depressed and was later admitted to St Stephen's Hospital for an overdose of barbiturates.

He said that Joan Wrangell left the hospital on 2 September 1958 and went to live in Hans Road, arrangements for which he had made for her. The manageress at the house said that she knew Joan Wrangell as Miss Wrangell.

A psychiatrist at St Stephen's Hospital said that Joan Wrangell was admitted to the hospital on 6 August 1958, but said that it was more by bad judgement that she had taken an overdose of barbiturates on that occasion.

He noted that she had received treatment for her complaint in America as well as the United Kingdom.

Joan Wrangell was a Baroness.