TV antiques expert fought ‘like a tigress’ before death
THE husband of an Antiques Roadshow expert who died after suffering a postpregnancy panic attack has described how medics and police had to fight to restrain her.
Sotheby’s jewellery expert Alice Gibson-Watt had to be held down by five police and paramedics in an ambulance during a suspected bout of postpartum psychosis, an inquest at the West London coroner’s court heard.
The 34-year-old died in hospital with a ruptured liver and internal bleeding after the incident in November 2012. The previous month, she had given birth to her first child, a daughter, Chiara Charlotte.
Anthony Gibson-Watt told the jury that during the incident at their home, his wife began to crawl around her bed on all fours shouting that her daughter was unsafe. He said: “Neither Alice or I were at all aware of postpartum psychosis. What happened that first night was deeply traumatic and wholly unlike my dear wife Alice.”
He said she was taken to Lakeside Mental Health Unit, Southall, and he added: “I was somewhat relieved she was in the right place to start receiving treatment. How wrong that turned out to be.”
The inquest heard how Mr Gibson-Watt called his mother-in-law, Miranda Phillimore, to their home. She said that she found her daughter in the back of the ambulance. “She was alarmingly strapped down with five people holding her down at the time,” she said.
In her witness statement Ms Phillimore said her daughter was “as wild as a tigress” in the ambulance.
Paramedic Suzanne Elia said: “She was very distressed, she was shouting ‘my baby is dead’. She was struggling a lot, but they carried her out to the ambulance.”
She told the inquest jury that paramedics didn’t have restraining training and, if someone requires restraint, then they would call for police support.
The inquest, which is scheduled to run for three weeks, is expected to hear from four London health trusts and the Metropolitan Police.