Inquest – Portsmouth Evening News – Monday, 17 April 1922

Elderly Woman Killed Instantly. Sitting at the Pavilion, Selsey, this morning, Mr. F. B. Tompkins, Deputy Coroner for the district, held an inquest rendered necessary by a sad motor fatality which occurred at Selsey yesterday morning. Deceased was Miss Emily Stanton, nurse, in the employ of Mrs. Georgina Shackle, widow, residing at 6, Station Road. Selsey, who, while pushing a perambulator containing the four year old son of her mistress, was run into by a motor car and killed instantly. She had accompanied her mistress to church and had then gone for walk with the little boy. The car belonged to Mr. Leslie Wm. Farrow. a Streatham gentleman, who had driven down from London on Thursday last. The evidence showed that yesterday morning he lent the car to another visitor, Mr. George Stanley Holman Cox, Ealing, who had never driven it before, who went for spin towards Chichester with a young lady passenger, Miss Doris Bersey, of Gordon Road. Ealing. They started from the Bungalows at West Beach Selsey, and after passing the tramway lodge had to pass a trap in which a Mr. J. Jellon a London Parliamentary journalist, was driving. Mr. Jellon saw the car turn to the near side and then apparently make for the hedge. One wheel got onto the bank beside the road and then the car turned to the right and ran diagonally across the road, colliding with the nurse and pram. Deceased who had been employed in the family of Mrs. Shackle for 45 years, and was 59 years of age, was killed instantly, the child fortunately sustaining only very slight injuries. Mr. Cox described how he found that the steering gear refused to act properly, and it transpired that it had gone wrong in London and had been repaired. Albert Sayers, a Selsey chauffeur-mechanic, who tested the car immediately after the mishap, testified that he had attempted what Mr. Cox had done with exactly the same result, and a description of what was wrong with the steering gear was given Mr. L. Maidment, motor engineer, to whom the car was atterwards taken to be repaired. The jury, of which Major Leith was foreman, returned a verdict of accidental death, and attributed the accident the faulty steering gear. They attached no blame to either Mr. Cox or the driver of the car.