Henry Pocock

Henry Pocock was found dead at his flat in Neathouse Flats, Lupis Street, Pimlico on 18 September 1984.

He had had a plastic bag over his head.

An open verdict was returned.

He had been the deputy steward of the flats.

When the Coroner recorded the verdict he suggested that Henry Pocock might have been depressed and had suffocated himself, or that he might have been indulging in a sexual aberration that had gone wrong and had been drunk at the time. However, he added that it was also possible that some other person had been there.

He said that he thought that the second possibility seemed the most likely, but that he could not discount other possibilities, noting that the evidence was not clear.

A man that lived in the same flat as Henry Pocock said that Henry Pocock got a job at the London University. He said:

He added that there had been some doubt about his job recently, but that he had never threatened to take his life.

He said that when he returned home on 18 September 1984, that he found Henry Pocock lying on the bed with a plastic bag over his head and that he then called the police.

A friend of Henry Pocock, a solicitor who had lived in Stoneleigh Street, Westminster, said that he had known him for over three years and that when he last saw him on 13 September 1984, that he had been in good spirits and was talking about a holiday in Canada on 22 September 1984. He said that Henry Pocock had never talked about taking his own life.

He noted that Henry Pocock had been a homosexual and might have used the plastic bag for some sexual practice.

The pathologist said that Henry Pocock's death was due to suffocation by the plastic bag and that there were marks round both nipples.

A detective that called to the flat said that he was satisfied that no other person was involved in Henry Pocock's death.