SP3951 : Burton Dassett Old VicarageRector Dead in Well!"Publicity given to the marriage ... of the Rev. Thomas Wallace Lumb, aged 65, to an 18-year-old village girl had in no small part increased the distress of mind which led to the rector's suicide, said Dr Stephen Tibbitts, the Mid-Warwickshire coroner, at the inquest at Gaydon ... yesterday. The couple were married a year after the rector's first wife died at the age of 91.
"Mr Lumb's body, weighted down with sacks filled with stones, was found in a well at the vicarage at Burton Dassett.
"It was only fair to Mrs Lumb ... to say that the vicarage was an extremely lonely place and one could appreciate that she felt very far from her own people and others of her own age."
- from
The Manchester Guardian, 2 April 1948, p.8