Woman died of heart attack as she hung out washing

A WOMAN found dead in her back garden by a son, possibly fell and suffered a heart attack while she hung out her washing, an inquest heard yesterday.

Stephen Wills called to his 75-year-old mother Hannah mother’s home at Cathedral Road in Cork city at around 9pm on December 8 last year, when he discovered she had not kept an appointment with a friend.

Mr Wills became concerned when there was no answer so he climbed over the back wall and saw her lying on the ground outside the back door.

“It looked like she had been doing something with the washing. I called an ambulance and put my jacket over her,” Mr Wills said in a statement read to Deputy Cork City Coroner Philip Comyn yesterday.

The court heard evidence from gardaí arriving at the scene that she was cold to touch. Mrs Wills was pronounced dead by a doctor.

Mr Comyn said she had been hanging her washing and either fell and had a heart attack, or else she fell because she had a heart attack.

“It would appear she fell outside, fractured her left femur and tried to get indoors.

‘‘There’s no evidence of hypothermia but in my view, it played a role in her death,” Mr Comyn said.

Mr Comyn said the postmortem concluded the cause of death was congestive cardiac failure, and he said the death occurred by natural causes.