STARVED TO DEATH

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 306, 17 March 1928, Page 12

STARVED TO DEATH

WOMAN REFUSES DOCTOR TERRIBLY EMACIATED Extraordinary evidence was given at an inquest at Preston, England, on a woman who refused to have a doctor and died a couple of days after being taken in an emaciated condition to the Fulwood Institution. She was Miss Marie Milburn Foster, 52, who lived with her two brothers. Dr. Ford said that when admitted to the institution the woman was almost unconscious, but was able to scream at the slightest attempt to disturb her, and she resisted examination. She was extremely wasted. She was partly paralysed in both legs, had bed sores, and had a tubercular abscess arising from the spinal column, while on the left hand was a large tubercular abscess. Death was due to tuberculosis of the spine and hand along with starvation. There was no doubt her life would have been prolonged by medical attention earlier. “Eccentric and Thick-Headed” Ernest Foster said that his sister,, who was housekeeper for himself andhis brother, accidentally snapped a minor bone in her wrist some months ago, but it appeared to improve. On Whit Monday, however, she fell off a chair while watching a procession from a window and hurt the lower part of her back. She had never been medically attended. “I have asked her above a hundred times to have a doctor, but she was so eccentric and thick-headed she would not have one,” he said. Only when she got into a semi-conscious condition was he able to send for a doctor without the fear of having him ordered out. John Edward Foster said they could not compel his sister to have a doctor. She had always been eccentric, very stubborn and dictatorial. “Pathetic Household” The coroner said the whole household seemed to be extraordinary and pathetic in the way it was run. It was only when a person was helpless, he pointed out, that legal responsibility devolved upon those living with her, and in this case the woman whs, from her evidence, capable of deciding things for herself until shortly before her death. H© did not think he had ever seen a more disgraceful spectacle than the emaciated state of the woman. There was nothing left of her except bones. This must have been due to systematic starvation. She could not be reduced to that state in two or three weeks. The jury returned a verdict of “Accidental death,” in accordance with the medical evidence.