Reason for Loss |
Evening Despatch - Wednesday 04 April 1945: Death from misadventure was the verdict at a Stratford-on-Avon inquest to-day on L.A.C. Thomas James Martin, aged 23, who after spending an afternoon at Hall Green greyhound racing returned to his Midland R.A.F. camp alone and was found unconscious on the concrete floor near wash basins with a wound on the back of his head. Professor J. M. Webster, the Home Office Pathologist, who made an autopsy, said the wound was superficial and very slight but beneath it he found a fracture of the skull and while Martin was a wellmade man, his skull was very much thinner than normal. Also found pleurisy and heart enlargement. "The all important question of accident, suicide or murder,” said the pathologist. ”we can eliminate suicide. So far as murder is corcerned the slight nature of the wound is out of keeping with what we usually find connected with homicide and on the other hand it is consistent with a fall.” It was a reasonable and logical deduction that the young man had a momentary attack of syncope and the fall cracked his thin skull. There, was no evidence of foul play or that he had been in fight. |