§ MR. SPICER (Monmouth, &c.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been drawn to the case of the late Mrs. Brown, whom it is reported, in spite of a doctor's injunctions that she should be conveyed to the hospital because she was suffering from apoplexy, was dragged to the Wolverhampton Police Station by two policemen and locked up all night on the charge of being drunk and incapable, with the results that she was found dying next morning and was dead by the evening; and whether there are no police matrons at this and other stations, whose duty it is to attend to women when under arrest?
§ MR. ASQUITHThe conduct of the two policemen is now under investigation by the Watch Committee; in the meantime, they have been suspended without pay. The facts appear from the evidence at the inquest to be as stated, except that there was medical evidence to show that the woman's removal to the police station could not have affected her life, as it is stated that she could not have lived in any case. There is a police matron attached to the station; but by a most regrettable mistake she was not called in in this case, as both the sergeant and constable on reserve duty considered that Mrs. Brown was simply drunk and incapable.