Death of Mr Hopper of Shrivenham

Reading Mercury

Sat 22nd Nov, 1856

 

Shrivenham

 

Awfully Sudden Death. Another instance of the awful uncertainty of life, occurred in the village of Shrivenham on Saturday evening last. The deceased was Mr T. Hopper, a resident medical practitioner, of Shrivenham, and formerly and for many years a resident of the town of Reading. An inquest on the body was held on Monday last, at the Barrington Arms Inn, before W.D. Wasbrough, Esq., Coroner, and a respectable jury, when the following evidence was adduced: - Mary Summers, an intelligent girl, about 17 years of age, deposed as follows; She had been in the service of the deceased about a fortnight. On Saturday last, deceased walked to Bourton, a village, a short distance from Shrivenham, and returned about 2 o’clock in the afternoon; he appeared much fatigued after his journey, and complained of being unwell, which he had previously done for some time past. In the afternoon, he partook of some medicine and gruel and about half-past eight o’clock retired to rest. About half-past ten, as she and Miss Hopper (who formed the whole of the inmates), were sitting down stairs, they were alarmed by hearing something fall heavily on the floor; they immediately ran up stairs and saw that the deceased had fallen out of bed. Miss Hopper raised his head, and he breathed two or three times, but never spoke. Mr C.G. Parker, Surgeon, deposed to having been sent for on the night in question, when he found the deceased on the floor, with his head in Miss Hopper’s lap; he was quite dead, and must have been so for half an hour before his arrival. From the facts he had ascertained, and the appearance of the body, he was quite certain death arose from disease of the heart, and, the jury coinciding with those views, a verdict to that effect was returned. This melancholy event has cast a gloom over the whole village. Mr Hopper was in his 72nd year.