A WOMAN with a history of mental illness killed herself by walking down a tunnel into the path of a train, an inquest was told.

Mrs Ann Marie Swinn never talked of suicide but often complained of stomach pains, suffered mood swings and was worried she was seriously ill, according to community psychiatric nurse Andy Atkinson, who knew her for more than two years.

She was a sweet and charming wife who was lost to mental illness, her husband Graham Swinn, of Bryers Croft, Wilpshire, said.

A month before she died aged 49, she took an overdose of paracetamol and was taken to Queen's Park Hospital. "It was a cry for help," her husband, a company director working in Bury, told the Blackburn inquest.

"She was convinced she had a physical problem and said she didn't have any more faith in her GP." Mrs Swinn later told doctors she took the pills for the pain and had not meant to kill herself and she asked to go home after medical tests showed nothing wrong.

The couple spent the weekend planning decorating and choosing new furniture but the following Wednesday evening Mrs Swinn was not home when her husband returned. She often stayed with friends and Mr Swinn did not to contact police.

She was last seen alive at 10am on Wednesday when Shirlie Anne Greenhalgh, of Durham Road, Wilpshire, was out walking her dogs and noticed a woman at Tunnel Top, Wilpshire, gazing down the railway lines.

On Thursday evening, April 9, a train driver saw a badly injured body lying by the tracks as he drove through Wilpshire tunnel.

A post-mortem examination showed no sign of natural disease or drug overdose. The jury returned a verdict that she killed herself while the balance of her mind was disturbed.

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