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One of the more tragic incidents whilst Harold Taylor was in the police force, was that which turned out to be an attempted suicide that may only have been a cry for help, which went wrong and ended in death. It happened early one afternoon during the 1950's, as Harold was parading for duty. Harold tells us of the events in his own words.
There had been an explosion in a house in the Broadwater area. I was sent to guard the house against theft. When I got there, an ordinary semi-detached dwelling, which may have been the end of a block of four, was standing with its rear corner blown off.
The fire brigade was just leaving, there having been no fire and the building considered safe against collapse. A body had been removed from an upstairs room.
I went into the house and looked around and on going into the kitchen the first thing I noticed was the fridge, the top of which was convex. The gas taps had apparently been found on, but now that the back of the building was blown out, the building had been ventilated.
My immediate presumption was that when the fridge motor cut in, the spark had ignited the gas and caused the explosion. Just as I had reached this opinion the Fire Inspection Officer arrived on the scene. I passed on my theory, with which he concurred.
Apparently the woman had been found dead on a bed upstairs. The following day I was again sent to the house to relieve the beat man for breakfast. Whilst there, the workmen were removing the rubble in barrows.
As a fellow tipped out one load a piece of paper was blown to me, which I picked up. On it I read the words 'Doug, keep out, gas'. I informed the Coroners Officer. This apparently helped to sort out a situation, for unbeknown to me a note had been found with the body, but it was non-committal.
Of course in ordinary events the presence of gas in the house and the distance she was removed from it, she probably would not have died. It was the unexpected circumstances that caused the tragedy. I do not recall that she had taken any tablets.
It came out at the inquest that she had left a note in which she believed herself to be suffering from Cancer, but the post-mortem revealed that she was not.
I would not now be remembered in Worthing, but then, many would stop me in the street and comment on what they had read of my sporting activities.
I have left my mark on the town, but none will be aware of it. One of those would no doubt have taken place anyhow due to subsequent rearrangements of the towns traffic system, but initially I caused it, and that was the removal of the bus stop at the bottom end of High Street, to outside the Methodist Church in the Steyne.
The second was brought about by a nasty accident. This was the erection of the barrier onto the promenade at Splash Point. Up until the incident it had been possible for any vehicle to drive off the road at this end of the esplanade onto the seafront. Not that anyone did, but it was possible.
The incident was exposed like this. It was a filthy wet November evening. I was carrying out relief duties in the front office after having had my tea, when a call came in to the effect that there was an accident near the boating lake on the seafront.
This was my beat, and I was just about to resume it, so was sent.
I arrived on the scene to discover that the ambulance had already removed a lady to hospital. It later transpired that she was the mother of another police constable at the station. The scene was on the footpath between the beach and the boating pool.
There was a low wall separating the path from the forefront of the pool and the place was in complete blackness. It was teeming with rain and I had little to see by, other than the lamps of this little old Morris 8 with collapsible hood.
The driver was a nursing sister who had just driven in from Wales to take up a post at Worthing Hospital.
She was tired, distressed and shocked, for she had just knocked over this old lady in a badly lighted strip of roadway. When she had got out of her car she found that she was on the beach and not on a road, and did not know where she was or how she had got there. She had been following the road and just drove straight on.
Of course there is another factor to disclose. This was hushed up and I had difficulty bringing it to light at the inquest. There were street lamps along this footpath under normal circumstances most of the year, but either through neglect or incompetence there was not this night, nor had there been for some time.
Why? To supply electricity to the booking cabin at the boating lake, the lamp post immediately where the accident happened had its lamp removed and blanked off so that a lead could be taken to the booking cabin.
The boating lake closed down at the end of the summer season, so why had the street lamp not been replaced? No one was prepared to account for this, but it was in position the following day when the police photographer from Chichester arrived to take pictures of the scene of the tragedy.
Although I am not aware of anyone having made a similar mistake before, I could accept how it happened. Given the type of conditions prevailing, the fact that the person was a complete stranger looking for directions, and at that time the road, with no more than a very slight rise, continued onto the beach path, it was plausible.
I am afraid that the PC whose mother subsequently died, did not see it this way. Her injuries were not considered serious, and her untimely death was a shock and surprise to the medical staff.
It was almost as though the woman, who was a widow, had decided that she would not bother to survive. She died about three days later.
The outcome of the inquest was accidental death with a recommendation that there should be a barrier erected at the Marine Drive entrance to Splash Point to prevent a similar accident in the future.
I did not disclose to the authorities, that when I had finished taking details at the scene I got the driver to drive me. I was going to show her the way to the hospital.
It meant a very tricky little manoeuvre to get off the tarmac footpath through a break in the seafront wall, and thence into the road called the Esplanade.
I did notice that the brakes were not very satisfactory and very jerky. I advised her to have them seen to as soon as possible. The braking however, was not a contributory factor in the accident, as there were no skid marks.
Harold Taylor West Sussex, 2001
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