Arthur Leslie Coulson

Arthur Leslie Coulson was hit by a car from behind whilst on his bicycle.

He had been knocked down near the Hadrian Hospital Bridge at Wallsend at about midnight on 16 February 1959.

He was a railway porter and had lived in Whitley Road, Whitley Bay.

The police said that they made extensive inquiries but were unable to trace the car.

His daughter said that Arthur Coulson had no defects in his sight or hearing and that he was a careful rider and that his cycle had been checked the week before the incident and new batteries fitted to its lighting system.

The pathologist that carried out  the post mortem said that his cause of death was a broken neck which was consistent with having been thrown over his handlebars. It was noted that the back wheel of his bicycle had been buckled.

A man that lived in Alwynton Avenue in North Shields said that he had been cycling towards the coast  when he saw a stationery car ahead of him. He said that the driver was out of the car and was examining something at the back but that he then got back into his car and drove off. The man said, 'I thought it looked a bit fishy. I pedalled hard to get the number but he drove off before I could do so'.  He said that when he got to the point where he had seen the car that he found Arthur Coulson lying in the road with his badly-damaged bicycle near it.

When the man was questioned, he said, 'The driver of the stationery car when I first saw him, might well have been looking at either the bicycle or the man's body'.

A man from High Farm in Wallsend said that he had been driving along in his car towards Newcastle when he was stopped by the other cyclist near the Hadrian Hospital Bridge. He said that when he got out he saw a skid mark about 30 to 40 feet long from the bicycle near the kerb to the centre of the road.

He noted that it had been a clear night and that visibility had been good.

He further recalled that on the quarter mile stretch of road that he had just driven down before the incident that he had seen a saloon car pass him travelling towards the coast.

A policeman that examined Arthur Coulson's bicycle said that the front lamp of his bicycle had been in working order but that there was no bulb in the back red light. However, the policeman noted that visibility had been very good and that lights or no lights, that Arthur Coulson would have been visible to an oncoming car.

The policeman said that there was a skid mark extending from the kerb to the centre of the road that was about 37 feet long, after which the Coroner said, 'It looks as if the car applied its brakes, travelled 16 feet before it hit the cycle and then went for 37 feet before the skid mark ended?, to which the policeman replied, 'Yes'.

When the policeman was asked a question he agreed that an evil-disposed person could have removed the bulb from the back light on the bicycle after the accident.

When the Coroner summed up he said, 'Whoever was responsible for this tragedy behaved in a dastardly fashion'.

He said that it was inconceivable from the evidence that the driver of the car would not have known that he had hit something.

He noted that it was a mysterious feature of the case that the bulb was missing from the back light of the cycle as it had otherwise been most carefully maintained.

The Coroner said, 'It makes one wonder whether the driver of the car had removed the bulb so that if anything developed and he was apprehended  he could talk about no rear light on the cycle. But that, of course, is conjecture. The driver responsible for this will have it on his conscience and it may weigh so heavily on his conscience that he will go and tell the police about it'.