May Jones

May Jones was knocked down by a car on 13 March 1963 and died later at her home on 2 April.

She had been walking home from bingo with her husband when, as they crossed Whitten Road in Greenford, when a car swung round the corner and knocked her down. Her husband said:

They were afterwards taken to Harrow Hospital by the driver of the car that hit May Jones. The driver of the car had also had a woman with him.

May Jones's husband said that he wrote down the registration of the car on a food bag but that as he was helping his wife into the hospital the driver of the car snatched the bag from his hand, saying:

He said that when he got the bag back that the number was missing.

After May Jones was treated she was taken home in a police car.

A duty officer at the hospital said that whilst May Jones was being attended to by another doctor, her husband, who was 'most distressed', was trying to write the driver's name and address on the back of a casualty department admittance slip. However, the duty officer said that he thought that it would be better if May Jones's husband and the driver of the car were separated and so he put May Jones's husband into a waiting room and he write down the name and address that the driver dictated to him.

He said that the driver of the car then asked if he could go, but said that he told him that he would have to wait until the police arrived. He said:

However, when a nurse went to look for the driver a few minutes later he and his car had gone.

It was also later found that the name and address he had given were false.

May Jones later died at her home, 541 Oldfield Lane on 2 April 1963.

The pathologist said that she died from a blood clot in the lungs that had resulted from the leg injuries that she had suffered when she was knocked down.

When the police arrived they were given the admittance slip and they went to the address shown, which was in 28 Pleasant Way, Alperton. When the police went to 28 Pleasant Way, they were told that no one of that name lived there, but that a man of that name lived at 38 Pleasant Way, and so the police went there and interviewed the man whose name had been given, however, he denied all knowledge of the accident and that he didn't even own a car.

He told the police that he had been decorating at his flat in Cromwell Court, Ealing Road, Wembley on 13 March 1963, all evening. His story was corroborated by three  other people, including his fiancee, who had been at the flat that evening.

In his statement to the police, he said:

At the inquest, the Coroner noted that the driver had known the man's name and address, apart from the slight error in the number, and asked him whether he knew who the diver might have been, to which he replied:

However, he noted that he was the shop steward at his factory and that his full name and address was on every union card issued there, and that therefore, quite a number of people would have known it.

When the Coroner summed up, he noted that every possible effort had been made to trace the driver of the car, but without success, and added that without the driver's evidence, they didn't have a complete picture of the collision in which May Jones was injured.

The jury then, on the Coroner's advice, returned an open verdict.