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A celebrity florist accidentally drowned her nine-year-old daughter while trying to give her a healing bath, an inquest has found.
Judith Richmond, 41, whose clients included the Queen, then walked into a lake with the body of her daughter, Millie, who had cerebral palsy. (Both are pictured.)
Police divers found the bodies two days later on 18 March.
Coroner Alan Crickmore recorded an open verdict on Mrs Richmond, of South Cerney, Gloucestershire.
The inquest heard that Mrs Richmond had been behaving erratically.
The florist, who had also worked for rock band Pink Floyd, had become convinced that Millie's condition had been caused by exposure to metals.
She had also told neighbours her daughter had autism, not cerebral palsy, and became convinced that Prof Stephen Hawking was also poisoned by metal.
A consultant psychiatrist told the hearing that Mrs Richmond was probably suffering from a manic bi-polar disorder at the time of the tragedy.
The court, in Cirencester, heard that Millie Whitehead-Richmond had died when her mother was trying to give her an 'experimental' healing bath and massage.
Both were reported missing from their home on 16 March by a housekeeper.
Their bodies were found in the lake, which was 50 yards from their home, by a police search team.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From BBC News:
