The Literature Network - The most terrible story of Christmas reads like a tale from Charles Dickens. But it happened in a British inner city in 2005 Inside story. A mother of five children is said to have died when she fell getting presents from the loft. But her real story is e

The most terrible story of Christmas reads like a tale from Charles Dickens. But it happened in a British inner city in 2005 Inside story. A mother of five children is said to have died when she fell getting presents from the loft. But her real story is e

Content courtesy of

From: The Independent on Sunday
Date: 20060101
Author:Julia Stuart reports

In Britain, the Christmas story of 2005 involves not a birth, but a death. A devoted single mother of five slips from the loft while getting presents down for her children on the Thursday three days before Christmas, and is killed instantly. And no one outside her West Bromwich home in the West Midlands knows until next day, when Eve, a finance collector, knocks on the door and is told by a six- year-old girl: 'You can't speak to Mum. She's dead.'

Published by newspapers on Boxing Day, the story feels like a bucket of cold water thrown over millions of readers as it is passed round with a ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

The most terrible story of Christmas reads like a tale from Charles Dickens. But it happened in a British inner city in 2005 Inside story. A mother of five children is said to have died when she fell getting presents from the loft. But her real story is e

Other Articles on Charles Dickens