Lilian Paginton

Lilian Paginton died after complaining of stomach pains.

No cause of death could be determined.

Evidence showed that she had gone shopping on the evening of 28 May 1927 in the village and that on her return she complained about pains in her stomach to her husband and sent her eldest son out for some gin and peppermint which she drank in the presence of her family. It was heard that she had felt better afterwards and ate a supper of fish and chips and had then gone to bed at about 10.30pm.

Her husband said that when he went up about half an hour later that he found Lilian Paginton dozing and that an hour later she was breathing heavily and could not be awakened. He said that he called for a doctor at 12.45am, 29 May, but that when he arrived she was dead.

It was said that her face had been livid and that it appeared that she had died from internal haemorrhage.

At the inquest the coroner read an analyst’s report which found minute traces of morphia in her stomach, but not sufficient to have caused death and said that there seemed to be no explanation for her death at all.

Her husband, who had been a groom employed at Northmoor Farm, said that he sometimes kept horse medicine in his pocket but that he never left it about the house. However, he said that he might have gone home wet through and left his coat in the house with a bottle of medicine in the pocket. He added that the bottle used for the gin and peppermint was an ordinary medicine bottle that Lilian Paginton had herself swilled out.

He added that he had never administered medicine to Lilian Paginton.

When the Coroner summed up he described the case as a mysterious one and recorded the more or less open verdict that Lilian Paginton was found dead in bed, her organs being sound and healthy, and her body showing no signs of violence or poison, except the stomach, which contained a minute trace of morphia that was insufficient to have caused death.