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I am reminded, says Harold Taylor, of one evening when I was on station duty.
Harold joined the police force in 1948 after coming out of the Merchant Navy. He continues...
A distressed lady from a village on the east side of the town, reported that her husband had not returned home from having taken their son to his boarding school that day.
Having got as much information as I could from her, which included the fact that he had a shotgun with him with which he hoped to do some duck shooting, I passed the information to the Duty Sgt. Bert Trott.
He in turn proceeded on cycle to Mannings Heath to interview the lady and garner more knowledge. As time passed I heard a mobile unit on the monitor reporting to the Information Room that they had come across an abandoned car near Hawkhurst.
I did not know where this place was and therefore telephoned Information Room and asked the location. Having established where it was, I told them of our missing person, and they got the mobile unit to search around. They eventually found a body with gunshot wounds.
I cannot recall if ever it was established why the person had taken his own life.
There are often distressing cases one has to deal with, like the day an elderly gentleman came in to report the sudden death of his daughter whilst I was on relief office duty. She was a young girl in her teens, who had suddenly taken ill and passed away.
She was known to suffer from Freidrick's Disease.
I had also been appointed to cover for the Coroner's Officer that weekend. Later when the doctor came in to make his report, as I was taking his statement, and bearing in mind the statement I had taken from the father, I asked him if he had tested for diabetes.
He told me that she had passed water just before he got there but had he only been able to get two drops he could have tested. In the circumstances, she died soon after admission to hospital.
I attended the hospital PM, which was probably the most gruesome one I have ever attended. From the father I learnt that at the time there were only 11 cases of Freidrick's Disease in the country. Her brother had also died from it, though it was not hereditary.
From what I read these days, it is much more common and it is hereditary. It is surprising the medical knowledge one accumulated from attending first aid classes and being Coroner's Officer.
This brings me to another instance. A woman who complained of different phenomena, which could only be caused by imagination, had on several occasions called me to a house. I considered this was possibly connected with the 'change of life' (I was only about 26 at the time).
I took the husband on one side and suggested to him that he might approach his doctor and have her committed to Graylingwell, the local mental hospital on a 14-day order for treatment.
Some months later the man stopped me in the street and thanked me for my advice and reported his wife completely cured of her obsessions.
Harold Taylor West Sussex, 2001
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