by John Wedlake

Created on: April 19, 2008   Last Updated: May 31, 2011

My mother died when I was 11, and my Aunt Mary became a " surrogate mum". When she and I were helping with my 86 year old grandmother, Mary's mother, she mused as to who would be looking after her in a similar circumstance, and I proclaimed heartily, "me," "Fat lot of good you'll be," she replied, "You'll be in your late 60's." The years rolled by, until Mary herself was in her 80's, the only difference was that she was a retired Metropolitan police detective chief superintendent, a spinster, and a very resolute independent person.

She lived in Chelsea, London, and I lived in Northamptonshire sixty miles North of London. She visited us on a regular basis, usually at weekends, traveling up to us by train. It was her habit to take a bath every night before retiring, and on one particular occasion, I noticed that she was not taking her nightly bath. It transpired that she had fallen in her bath in her flat prior to her visit, and had been stuck in it for two hours. This obviously caused me great concern, so I arranged for her to have a personal alarm, linked to an agency who were given a key to gain access in the event of her pressing the alarm, and I then persuaded her to continue her bathing ritual.

All went well for a while until disaster struck on the weekend of Friday evening, 18th June 2005. I had phoned that evening to to be assured she was alright. Unfortunately, safeguards that were normally in place over the weekend failed. A former colleague, who rang her on Saturday evenings, receiving no answer, thought that she must have gone to stay with me. A Maltese couple who used to take her to Mass on Sunday, had gone back to Malta on holiday. I was not aware of anything wrong until the following Tuesday. A social worker phoned me to say that she was unable to get a response to her calls. As Mary normally had the radio on at full blast because of hearing problems, this was not unusual. However I kept ringing her number to no avail, so I alerted the alarm company, who also notified the ambulance service.

The scene that confronted the ambulance-men on entry was horrific, Mary had fallen again in the bath, but had not kept her alarm near her, and so had been stuck for four nights and five days. I leave it to your imagination as to what state she was in! She had suffered a stroke, and was badly de-hydrated. The ambulance took her to the Chelsea and Westminster hospital, and she was there for some time. Eventually the hospital and social services agreed that she

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