Boy Fell to His Death from Skegness Hotel
Written by Angela Gooch on May 1st, 2008 in Accidents, Deaths, Human Interest.
Boy `left for ten minutes’ fell to death A 10-YEAR-OLD ****** [Down’s Syndrome] boy, on holiday at Skegness in a boarding house, was “left for no more than 10 minutes, asleep in bed with the room door locked, and inside that time he was lying on the concrete floor below as good as dead,” said Boston’s Coroner, Mr H. G. Frost, at a Boston inquest on Thursday. The inquiry heard how young Peter Wilson, of Walsall, was seem to fall about 20 feet from a sloping roof beneath his window at 7 Algitha Road, (pictured below) Skegness, in August.
Medical evidence showed that his death, a few hours later in Boston’s Pilgrim Hospital, was due to multiple injuries of the skull. The boy’s father, sales clerk, Mr John Henry Wilson, of Lister Close, Walsall, said he and his wife and their two sons — Robin (16) was the other — were holidaying at Skegness with friends. After spending most of the day on the beach they returned to the boarding house and then most of the party went to the nearby Lyndhurst Club, leaving Peter to be put to bed by his mother and grandmother in Room Eight on the top floor. Later, just after the mother and grandmother had joined them, Robin ran in to say Peter had fallen from the bedroom window, The bedroom door was locked because in the past Peter had got up at night and walked from his room. Mrs Lilian Wilson, said her son, who had been enjoying himself in the sea, needed attention every moment of every day. She and her mother-in-law put him to bed at 9 pm and stayed with him until he was asleep, when at 9.50 they went to the club. The window was left open and there was a small chair under it, but Peter was not normality able to climb. Mr John Edward Cressey, a shop assistant, of 4 Lawn Avenue, Skegness, said he saw the boy sliding feet first down the sloping roof below the casement bedroom window. He landed on the concrete forecourt below. The jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure. The Coroner commented: “No one could possibly point the finger of blame at anyone,”
1972 local news story. I have edited out an appellation which is socially unacceptable nowadays, and inserted in its place the term ‘Down’s Syndrome’.
