Frank Idris Roberts

Frank Idris Roberts was knocked down by a car on Longsight Road in Billington on the night of Saturday 29 August 1959.

He was a male attendant at Langho Colony.

He had been walking along Longsight Road with another attendant between 11pm and 11.30pm at the time he was hit. The other attendant said, 'I was on the grass verge and Roberts was walking in the gutter near the kerb'. He said that after a car that had come from the direction of Whalley passed he walked on two or three yards and found Frank Roberts lying on his back.

A butcher said that he had been riding his motorcycle combination along Longsight Road towards Whalley when he saw two men coming towards him, one of whom appeared to be about five feet from the studs in the centre of the road. He said, 'I saw a car behind them swerve violently into the centre of the road, right itself and carry on. It did not occur to me that the car had hit either of the men'.

A policeman that examined the screen said that he found Frank Roberts dentures about 17 feet from his body as well as black cellulose flakes in the roadway.

The pathologist said that his cause of death was cerebral haemorrhage and dislocation of the neck due to a blow on the back of the neck.

When the Coroner opened the inquest on Friday 4 September 1959 he said that the driver of the vehicle thought to have killed Frank Roberts might not have known that he had been in an accident.

The Coroner appealed to any driver that had been in the vicinity at the time to contact the police but the driver of the vehicle that hit Frank Roberts was never identified and an open verdict was returned.