WILTSHIRE'S deputy coroner William Bache has returned an open verdict on retired nurse Joan Appleton, despite the fact that she was found in the canal in Devizes wearing a rucksack full of bricks.

Mrs Appleton's body was found floating in the Kennet and Avon Canal by a dog walker shortly after 9am on the morning of June 4.

On Thursday an inquest at Melksham divisional police station heard that Mrs Appleton, 82, had a long history of depression and had taken serious deliberate drugs overdoses on two occasions.

Mr Bache heard Mrs Appleton originally came from Roehampton, London, and met her second husband, Ronald, while they were serving in the Armed Forces in the Middle East.

They married in 1953 and had two sons, Timothy and Barney, who is a constable with Wiltshire Police.

They moved to Potterne and later to Devizes, where Mr Appleton was in the antiques trade and Mrs Appleton ran a drapery alongside him. They couple separated and were divorced in 1972.

After that Mrs Appleton worked as a nurse at Devizes District Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon.

Barney Appleton told Mr Bache that he shared a house with his mother until 1980 but lost contact with her after a family dispute.

But they re-established contact when Mrs Appleton moved to Clock Tower Lodge in 2000, before falling out again in 2002.

The last time they saw each other was around Christmas 2002 when Mrs Appleton turned up at her son's front door in a confused state, complaining that the medication she had been put on by Green Lane Mental Health Unit in Devizes was not working. She said she was feeling very low and Mr Appleton made arrangements for her to see staff at Green Lane Hospital, in Devizes.

A statement from consultant psychiatrist Dr Gill Emerson, who had been treating Mrs Appleton since October 2002, said she had suffered from depression since she was 17 and over the years had had electric shock treatment and anti-depressants to try to overcome it.

She had taken a serious overdose of a cocktail of prescribed drugs in 1974 and then again in 1997.

But Dr Emerson said there was no evidence that suicide was planned as there was no note on either occasion.

Mr Bache heard a statement from Mrs Appleton's next-door neighbour, Michael Jones, who last saw her on May 31 when she appeared in good spirits and the two had joked together.

He then heard that Daniel Brophy, from Sells Green, had been walking his dog along the towpath of the canal at Lower Foxhangers, near Rowde, on the morning of June 4 when he saw what he thought was a cap floating in the water.

On closer inspection it was grey hair and he could make out the body of an elderly woman dressed in a red tee-shirt.

He went to nearby Foxhangers Farm and phoned the emergency services.

Detective Constable Marcus Tawn, who arrived at the scene at 10am, said that there was no obvious point of entry to the canal and no marks or injuries on the body.

But a rucksack containing about six large rocks was recovered, which Mrs Appleton had apparently been wearing when she went into the canal.

A post mortem report from Dr Sharon Khan, consultant pathologist at Salisbury District Hospital, said there was no ascertainable cause of death, although it could have been caused by drowning or a heart attack caused by the shock of entering the water.

Alcohol was present in Mrs Appleton's body but well below the statutory drink-drive limit.

Despite the evidence Mr Bache was not prepared to bring in a verdict of suicide.

He said: "I am not satisfied by a long way that Mrs Appleton took her own life. She may have set out to kill herself, changed her mind and perhaps slipped into the canal by accident.

Or she may have been carrying the rocks for an entirely different reason.

"Certainly suicide is not the only conceivable explanation and we will never know on whatever day it was she fell into the canal what was in her mind."