from a hospital bed.

That was the verdict of Coroner the Wor. Cheryl Ann Mapp, who ruled yesterday that Mr. Winslow Charles Darrell's death was accidental.

The inquest heard that Mr. Darrell, a regular smoker who had also suffered from throat cancer, had stopped eating about five months earlier and had begun to have trouble paying his rent.

In a statement that was read out in court, Ms Charlene Place, who collected the rent on behalf of the owner of Mr. Darrell's Devonshire apartment, said he was usually on time with his payments.

But in May, 1992, he started having trouble and only managed to pay $400 of the June rent leaving $200 outstanding.

Around that time Mr. Darrell, 59, is said to have stopped eating. He was losing weight steadily and many of his neighbours were giving him cooked food.

Mr. Darrell, a caddy at the Mid-Ocean Club, was also an alcoholic and a regular smoker who had an operation to treat his throat cancer some three years earlier.

On September 17, 1992, Ms Place went to his apartment to check on him and found him lying on the couch naked. He was breathing shallowly and spoke barely above a whisper.

She put him in her car and took him to hospital where he was admitted. He died less than 24 hours later.

Mr. Darrell was one of 12 patients under the care of staff nurse Mrs. Ayesha Paynter on the Curtis ward. She began work at 8 p.m. that day.

Mrs. Paynter said after she came back from her break the other nurses told her that he had become disoriented around 2 a.m.

Some 30 minutes later she went to check on him and found him trying to get up but she settled him in bed.

On her later hourly checks, he appeared to be sleeping comfortably.

A second nurse, Mrs. Bronya Hillier, who checked on Mr. Darrell while Mrs.

Paynter was on her break between midnight and 2 a.m., described him as becoming very agitated because he was experiencing withdrawal symptoms from alcohol.

She said she gave him Valium and asked an orderly to supervise him until the drug took effect.

The orderly stayed for about one hour by which time Mr. Darrell fell asleep.

Mrs. Hillier said the hospital alarm went off around 6 a.m. when Mr. Darrell was found lying on the floor face up between two beds with blood coming from his left ear.

He was pronounced dead at 3.15 that afternoon.

Dr. John Winwick, consultant pathologist at the hospital, said Darrell was extremely thin having lost some 50 pounds and he had a fractured skull caused by the fall, with dry blood on his left ear.

One lung was cancerous and the cancer had spread to his brain.