"We consider that the husband should have made more strenuous efforts to save his wife."
This opinion was expressed by the jury at ihe inquest at. Great Barford, Bedford, on Mrs. Gwen-doline Margaret Wilsher, 21, who was drowned in the Ouse a few weeks after her wedding. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.
Mrs. Wilsher fell into the river while taking an evening walk with her husband, Richard Percy Wilsher. a gardener.
The coroner, Mr. G. J. M. Whyley, before calling evidence, warned the jury "to disregard rumour and gossip and various tales."
The dead girl, he said, was a daily domestic servant employed at. Bedford, and on the day of her death she had cycled to Great Barford on her "half-day" to visit her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Norman, at whose house she was joined by her husband. The couple were on perfectly good terms and decided to go for a walk.
Dr. Archibald Basham said that a post-mortem examination showed that Mrs, Wilsher was an expecta mother. Death was due to drowning. It was possible that a woman in her condition might have been subject to fits of giddiness.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.