Newly-wed, 61, jumped to her death from church tower after hiding £25,000 debt from husband
Posted To The Web: Friday, January 15, 2010 - Daily Mail Reporter

A newly-wed jumped to her death from a church tower after running up bank and credit card debts of £25,000, an inquest heard yesterday.

Patricia Stoute, 61, did not tell her husband about her spending on 14 credit cards or what she owed the bank.

Mrs Stoute, who had been married to her new husband for less than a year, left a suicide note in which she said all the debts were hers and nothing to do with her husband.



Patricia Stoute with husband Kenneth on their wedding day in 2008. In her suicide note she said all the debts were hers and nothing to do with her husband


She plunged to her death from the Carfax Tower in the centre of Oxford, narrowly missing shoppers and passers-by below.

After the inquest, her husband Kenneth, 69, urged those in similar difficulties to talk to their partners.

He said: 'If you've got a problem, confide in your husband, let him know what's going on. The Government has all these schemes to help but the best person to help is the person living beside you.'

Jacqueline Martin, who works for Oxford City Council, told how she had been on her lunchbreak in her first-floor office, overlooking Carfax Tower, at 12.30pm on June 22 last year.

'I looked over and saw a female in the process of climbing over the top,' she said.

'I then saw the female lower herself down onto a ledge, then further down until she had both her hands on the ledge and was hanging from there. She momentarily hung from the ledge until she appeared to push herself out.

'I was shocked. I shouted out "Oh my God. I've just seen a woman jump off Carfax Tower". I was in total disbelief at what I had seen.'

She also recalled that nobody else had been at the top of the tower when Mrs Stoute jumped.
Born Patricia Phipps, she married her former handyman, Kenneth Stoute, in the summer of 2008. Her previous husband, George Bedding, had died of cancer in 2007.

Mr Stoute told the Oxfordshire coroner: 'She was the best thing since sliced bread. She was the perfect woman. I was proud to call her my wife.'

However, he added: 'She was a little bit secretive.'
Around two months before she died, Mrs Stoute confessed to her husband that she had financial troubles.

However, when he pressed her for details she just repeated: 'I've let you down. I've let you down.'
On the morning of his wife's death, Mr Stoute remembered how they had parted.
He said: 'She looked sad. I think she knew where she was going.'

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