From the Tewkesbury Yearly Magazine of 1840
| Considerable excitement was manifested in this borough, occasioned by the sudden death of a poor decrepit old woman, named Hester Evans, under circumstances which led to a rumour that she had been murdered by her fellow-lodger, Elizabeth Lane. The parties jointly occupied a wretched upstairs appartment, in a house inhabited by several families, in a passage called the Double Alley, leading from High Street into the Oldbury. Evans, who was in her 86th year, had been afflicted with two paralytic attacks, and was much enfeebled in mind and body; and Lane, who was in her 64th year, had been a cripple for a long period, and although not deficient in a degree of cunning, was nearly as imbecile in mind as the other. They were both widows and both paupers: the former belonged to the parish of Dymock, and the latter to Hanley Castle. An inquest was held on view of the body, before George Tate, Esq. coroner for the borough, and a highly respectable jury, at the Town Hall, in the afternoon of the same day; when it appeared that Lane and the deceased slept together, and that they quarrelled almost every night when they were in bed, as well as frequently in the day time.; that on the morning previously to Evan's death, they quarrelled from about half-past four to nearly six o'clock, calling each other by the most opprobious names, and biting each other's fingers. A post mortem examination of the body was made by Mr.J.N.Thomas; who stated that no external or internal appearance of violence whatever was discernible, except a mark upon one of the fingers; and that he believed the immediate cause of the death of the deceased was from an extraordinary quantity of water in the pericardium, or bag of the heart. The jury after a lengthened investigation, returned a verdict that Hester Evans "Died of dropsy of the pericardium; and that her death was accelerated by the violent exertion and excitement consequent upon a quarrell between her and a woman named Elizabeth Lane"----The apathy and entire want of feeling displayed by Lane (who had, indeed, at different periods of her life, witnessed with little concern both a husband and a son transported for sheep stealing) was in the present case most extraordinary: she not only prepared her own breakfast, but ate it by the side of the yet warm corpse of her late bed-fellow; and hile the surgeon and his attendants were engaged in opening and examining the body, she cooked and ate her dinner, with the most perfect unconcern, in the same room in which the operation was performed. |