John Shorten

John Shorten was found dead 60ft below the Newcastle end of the High Level Bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Monday 4 May 1959.

His inquest heard that he appeared to have been dead for between 6 and 8 days when he was found.

His body was found by a workman lying in some long grass behind a 12ft hoarding whilst he was working on the bridge.

At the time of his death John Shorten had been of no fixed address.

His father, who lived in Lobley Hill, Gateshead, said that the last that he knew was that John Shorten had been living in Edinburgh where he had been working as a newsboy and said that he last saw him about three weeks before Christmas 1958 when John Shorten visited him for a few hours.

He noted that John Shorten had become very distressed and never the same after his mother died in 1951 and that after that he rarely saw him. He added that he was not altogether surprised at the circumstances in which John Shorten was found.

However, the Coroner said that it was not known what had happened to John Shorten and that no one would ever know and an open verdict was returned.