1908] A Coroner's Inquest 209 



Denman of this parish. Then the jury having been sworn, they were 

 instructed to cross the road and view the corpse on which they were 

 sitting, and I went to the cottage with them where the girl's body lay. 

 Our proceedings were all the more impressive from the intermittent 

 roar of holiday motors passing in quick succession outside along the 

 Worthing road, joy-riders, without slackening of speed or knowledge of 

 or care for what had happened, or was happening, light-hearted Lon- 

 doner folk concerned with nothing but their own pleasure and the 

 thought of in how few minutes they could make the run from one 

 point to another of their outing to Worthing. 



" Inside the cottage the dead girl, a great, strong, healthy country 

 girl, lay there in her coffin, looking hardly dead, for the brown of the 

 summer sun in the hayfields was on her face, only there were two 

 great wounds on the forehead, and others on cheek and chin, where 

 the motor had dragged her, face downwards, on the road. 



" On our return to the barn the proceedings were resumed, the 

 first witness, the girl's brother, a young fellow of eighteen, not unlike 

 her, a tall, well-shaped, ruddy country boy, with a straightforward, 

 honest face. He told very simply how he and his brother had been on 

 their bicycles to West Grinstead station ; how, coming back, he had met 

 his sister, who had been sent to her father in the field to carry him his 

 dinner, how she had asked for a ride back to their home half a mile 

 away, how he had taken her on the step behind him, her little sister 

 riding with the brother. It was only a few hundred yards to the 

 cross roads. Arrived there, he had looked up the Horsham road and 

 had seen a motor coming, but as it was thirty yards away and he was 

 already on his own road, he held on his course, but the motor neither 

 slackened speed nor turned aside and before he could get clear across it 

 caught them. All was over in an instant. Another rustic witness 

 corroborated the account, and the police gave details of measurements 

 and distances, and the doctor who had found the girl lying by the road- 

 side bleeding from head and mouth, with other injuries. She never 

 recovered consciousness. I was allowed by the coroner to put several 

 questions, for the motorist had pretended that the girl had fallen off, 

 but both eye-witnesses were clear against this. Such was the main evi- 

 dence. The defendant, a young bank clerk from Balham, who had 

 been driving the motor, was a respectable youth in every way, but 

 short-sighted, and wearing spectacles. What came out was that if he 

 had kept to the near side instead of along the crown of the road there 

 would have been no accident, for the road was wide and there was 

 ample room, but he had gone on without thought, it being a good 

 piece of the road for speed, slightly downhill, keeping along the 

 crown, and chancing what might be in front. The jury, I am thankful 

 to say, returned a verdict of manslaughter. The thing made me 



