Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 31 January 1959
A Crowded Hour
Picture From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hawthorn
So far as I know (and I shall be instantly corrected if my knowledge is deficient) Mexborough has produced no one of note outside the field of sport.
Two International Soccer footballers and a heavyweight boxing champion—that’s all.
Until Mike Hawthorn the racing motorist, won world renown.
Mike was killed on the road a day or two after retiring from racing because it was getting “too dangerous.” He died at the end of one wonderful career and on the threshold of another for there is small doubt that he would have become a big name in motor-engineering. Very strange that he should have been overtaken by Death “past the post.” and should have died in like manner with his father (also wise in the ways of motors) who was killed on the road four years ago.
Leslie Hawthorn had a garage at Mexborough and Mike was cradled in it. He was carried mouth at the age of three but has often visited his birthplace. Mike Hawthorn must have had a charming personality, for the tributes that have been paid him from many parts of the world have all mingled affection with admiration.
The death of such a man in such a way is one more reminder that in the midst of life we are in death and that this is more literally or generally true of motorists than of any other class of wayfarer.
That it should happen so often to men who have superb mastery of their machines merely underlines the common peril.
Halifax Evening Courier – Tuesday 27 January 1959
Hawthorn “Was Doing 80,” Says Witness
Accident verdict at inquest
Speed was indicated as the cause of the accident that killed Mike Hawthorn by the fact that the front of his Jaguar car very nearly severed from the rear, said the coroner (Mr. G. T. M. Methold) at the Guildford inquest last night on the 29-year-old world champion motor-racing driver.
A verdict of accidental death was recorded. Hawthorn was killed on Thursday in a crash on the Guildford by-pass. The coroner, summing-up, said: ” There is no question whatever that Mr. Hawthorn was going quite fast. There is no question that he hit a bollard, and that set this car on the way it did till it came into collision with this tree with the result that the front of the car was very nearly severed from the rear.
“That, I suggest to you, is an indication of the cause of this accident—speed. We have no indication of what that speed was except that Mr. Hill (Mr. Arthur Hill. a Guildford gardener , said it was doing 80.-