Death by Drowning, 1938 Alexander Forsyth Cadell

[Wonderwoman1]

Dr Alexander Forsyth Caddell died at 22 Windsor Street ,Edinburgh by drowning, on May 14th 1938 at 11pm. He was last seen alive on May 13th at 5.50pm

I assume in the bath. I wondered if anyone could look this up in the newspapers of the time.

I wondered where his wife, Florence Caroline Jessie nee Shirran was at the time?

The death was registered by an intimate friend John Richardson Aviemore Cottage, Avinmore

[whitehound]

Yes, he drowned in the bath - there's a brief mention of it in The Scotsman on 16/05/1938. The cause of death is given as both angina and drowning, so I suppose the GP thought he'd had a severe angina attack while in the bath. I wondered whether the "intimate friend" from Aviemore had come down to visit and they'd been drinking a bit, causing Alexander to fall asleep in his bath and slip down, and then he had a heart attack while trying to struggle out - especially of it was one of those old-fahioned baths with the very deep U-shaped cross-section.

According to The Scotsman 22 Windsor Street was his home address and he was living alone there - although the paper makes an error by saying he hadn't been seen alive since Wednesday, whereas his death certificate says he had last been seen the evening before he was found dead, the 13th, which was a Friday.

He definitely wasn't a widower - Jessie lived until 1982. "Living alone" implies a lot more than her having gone away for the weekend, although The Scotsman may have got that wrong, since it was wrong about when he had last been seen alive.

Perhaps they'd split up - but then she was known for the rest of her life as the doctor's widow, so she didn't remarry. I know that Jessie remained close, throughout her life, to her youngest sister Ethel Maud, known as Elisa Maria (the future Kazini Elisa Maria Dorgi Khangsarpa of Sikkim). It might be that Jessie had gone out to the Far East for six months to visit her little sister.

May I ask what your interest in this incident is? I've been following it up as a side-line to investigating the Shirrans, because Ethel Maud was my grandmother, making Jessie my great-aunt.