not an accident, Coroner Edward King ruled yesterday.

Mrs. Robinson who had moved in with her son and his family one month earlier on Wefo Road in Sandys while her own apartment was being renovated, fell down a flight of stairs.

Her daughter-in-law Angela Sumner said she was playing cards with her two children in the living room on the evening of January 12, 1996 and Mrs.

Robinson had decided to go upstairs to bed.

She climbed the stairs to her bedroom but fell down after she had reached the top.

Mrs. Sumner said her mother-in-law was still conscious and she called for help from a neighbour who was a retired nurse. She also called the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

When the ambulance attendants arrived they found Mrs. Robinson conscious and alert at the bottom of the stairs. They placed her on a backboard and transported her to hospital. There she showed some improvement but she went into shock and died on January 29.

Dr. John Winwick, who performed the autopsy, said a fall like Mrs. Robinson's could be fatal because it produced an injury similar to whiplash.

As a result the bones in her neck were bent too far which damaged the spinal chord.

Since Mrs. Robinson was 78 years old at the time she suffered several common infections including an abscess on her kidney which induced blood poisoning.

The combination of the abscess and her paralysis, he said, led to a blood infection that caused her death.

Dr. Winwick said there was no other suggestion that her death was due to any other reason because her injuries were consistent with a domestic fall.