Gloucestershire family's plea to solve mystery around 'fit and healthy' mum's death
A family from Gloucestershire are searching for answers after a woman died just months from being diagnosed with an asbestos related cancer.
Margaret Wilks, 77, was fit and healthy until last spring when she started to lose weight and kept getting breathless.
She had died by Christmas, just four months after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer associated with exposure to asbestos.
Mrs Wilks was a former factory worker from Yorkley, near Lydney. Now her husband and daughter want her old colleagues to help them solve the mystery of how she contracted the deadly disease.
Her husband David, 79, and daughter Melissa Wilks, 42, say they owe it to her memory to continue the search for the truth.
Margaret was just 15 when she left school and went to work for J Allen Rubber Company, later known as the London Rubber Company. She started out at the firm’s factory in Lydney as a packer but later became a charge hand.
She moved to the newer Whitecroft factory in the mid-1970s. Here she packed rubber items such as gloves and balloons, which may have contained industrial talc. She left in 1980, when her daughter Melissa was born.
Following tests she was diagnosed with mesothelioma last August and told her legal team how she believed several other colleagues at the factory - where her own sister Gaynor also worked - went on to develop an asbestos related disease.
David and Margaret, who married in 1968, had a full and active life together. Margaret enjoyed playing skittles, knitting and loved all sports.
Margaret died on December 19 last year, with David and Melissa by her side. David said: “Margaret was a wonderful wife and mum and it’s still so difficult to accept that she’s no longer with us.
"Margaret had been fit and well all her life, so her illness and mesothelioma diagnosis came as a tremendous shock. We’d barely had time to come to terms with it, before she passed away.
“We had been told about mesothelioma but could hardly believe things could change so quickly. Margaret was a practical woman and immediately set to work to find out how she could have come into contact with asbestos. However, she went from being an active person who enjoyed going out and about and visiting the shops to one who was reliant on others for care."
He said if anyone employed at either factory recalls Margaret or the working conditions it would be a great help.
He added: "Melissa has lost her mother and I have lost my wife and my best friend. Life is never going to be the same for us, but we want to honour Margaret’s memory by understanding how she came to contract this terrible disease.”
Rebecca Buxton, the specialist asbestos related disease lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, supporting David and Melissa, said: “Mesothelioma is a terrible disease and Margaret’s family are understandably still in shock following her sudden death.
"Her diagnosis and death has left them struggling to come to terms with an unexpected event that has turned their world upside down.
“Despite her illness, Margaret was determined to get at the truth behind her illness and we’re determined to support David and Melissa as they continue the search for answers in her memory.
"While nothing can make up for Margaret’s death, people coming forward with information could make all the difference to the investigation and at least provide David and Melissa with the answers and closure they deserve.”
Anyone who has any information that could help David and the family is asked to contact Rebecca Buxton at rebecca.buxton@irwinmitchell.com or 0117 926 1574.