What were the events that led up to that fateful Tuesday morning in April 1938? Was Nellie frazzled with four young children under her feet as she tried to get on with her housework? Had she shooed Harold out of the house.
“For goodness sake Harry, get out from under my feet.”
Or had the boy taken advantage of the noise and busyness of the house to sneak out before his mother found him a job to do or an errand to run.
Perhaps Nellie didn’t even notice he had gone until there came a knock on the door.
Hawkins Street in Rodbourne
Swindon Boy Drowned
Fell Into Water Fishing for “Tiddlers”
Nine year old Harold Wall, of 13 Hawkins street, Swindon, went fishing for “tiddlers” in the Great Western Pump House Butts, alongside the Gloucester branch line at Rodbourne, Swindon, just after lunch on Tuesday*. He had not been there long when he fell in the water and was drowned. The water is well over six feet deep at the spot.
Shouts of other youngsters near by attracted the attention of some men working on allotments, and they rushed to the scene. At first they could not find the lad’s body, but eventually grappling irons were brought into use and his body was recovered.
A doctor and the police were quickly on the scene and Chief Officer T.W. Abrahams of the Swindon Fire Brigade, rushed to the field where Harold’s body lay with the oxygen resuscitation apparatus, but the doctor had already pronounced life extinct.
Mr Abrahams responded to a telephone call from Mr S.A. Shaw, of 28 Hawkins street Swindon.
Harold is the son of Mr and Mrs E.F. Wall and it is thought that he fell through the hedge which grows on the very edge of the water and was quickly submerged in deep water.
He was fishing quite near the pumping station at the far end of the Butts.
When the men from the allotments reached the spot where the boy had fallen through a narrow gap at the base of the thick hedge they could not force a way through, and valuable time was lost owing to the need for making a detour round the Pump House.
Mr Wall, the boy’s father, has been employed on the G.W.R. coal wharf.
At the inquest held at Gorse Hill Police Station last night, by the Wiltshire Coroner (Mr Harold Dale) the jury returned a verdict of “Accidental death.” They added that no blame attached to anyone.
North Wilts Herald, Friday, 22 April, 1938.
Harold Charles Wall was born in the December quarter of 1928, the eldest of Ernest Frederick and Nellie Wall’s large family. He was buried on April 22, 1938 in a public grave plot C632 with four others.
*Easter Sunday fell on April 17 in 1938. It is likely the children were on a school holiday the following week.
Radnor Street Cemetery 