Two boys played under a tree in front of the house. Diana Roser watched them through the window until a shower of rain sent them scurrying home. Diana turned back into the room reluctantly, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, straining to focus on the bed. She saw that Sarah was still now, free from the convulsions that had twisted her body and made her cry out in pain for hours. The doctor had given her antidotes for the poison and a small dose of laudanum for the pain but it wasn’t enough. It was too late for a cure and the laudanum barely took the edge from the pain. But now she lay motionless and Diana sensed why. She walked slowly to the bed and looked down at Sarah’s face. She placed her palm on Sarah’s forehead and could tell that she had gone.
The next day, an April Monday in 1840, an inquest into Sarah Stringer’s death was held at the Crown.1 It was told that Sarah, the 19-year-old servant of farmer John Turner, discovered she was pregnant and decided to end her life because the baby’s father refused to support her. This would have been her second child and she could not provide for herself and another child. She swallowed a spoonful of arsenic, killing herself and her unborn child.
Diana was called as a witness and described how she was asked to minister to Sarah in her final hours. Sarah had spoken to her about the father of the unborn child, and how he had first asked her to say that the child belonged to someone else. When she refused and said she was going to commit suicide, he said he did not care.
The verdict was insanity. The inquest found Sarah to be of unsound mind and unable to make a rational decision.
When Diana left the Crown she must have been numb from the stress of giving evidence and from the memory of nursing a young woman whose life had ended in hopelessness. It was typical of towns like East Grinstead in the 19th century, places with little hope for the poor. She must also have thought of her own family, of her husband William, fortunate though he was to have a job, who barely made enough to feed their family. They had five young children and their future in the depressed south-east of rural England was bleak.
The experience with Sarah might have contributed towards Diana and William’s decision to leave England and emigrate to the new Swan River Colony in Australia.
- ‘Inquests in Sussex’, Sussex Advertiser, 6 April 1840, p 2. ↩︎
© 2021 Michael Robinson
Last updated 2 April 2026
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