Family of Mesothelioma Victim Compensated

After a long fight, the family of a woman who died in 2002 from asbestos-related cancer has received a five-figure sum in settlement of a compensation claim against her employers.
 
In 1957, Martha May Charlson had appeared on a poster promoting Turner and Newall, which employed thousands of people in the North West of England. She was pictured working at an asbestos-spinning machine in a clean working environment, but this did not reflect the reality of her day-to-day working conditions.
 
Mrs Charlson had been employed by the Turner Brothers Asbestos Company since the age of 16. She worked as a winder, pulling asbestos yarn from one bobbin to another. Asbestos dust from the winding process permeated the air in the room in which she and her colleagues worked.
 
The company did not provide any safety equipment, nor were there any extractor fans to help clear the atmosphere. In addition, Mrs Charlson was not warned about the dangers associated with exposure to harmful asbestos dust. She died aged 64 from mesothelioma, an extremely aggressive cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs, shortly after she retired.
 
Mrs Charlson's compensation claim took a long time to settle because her former employers went out of business in 2001. At that time, all claims against the company were frozen pending agreement between insurers and the company's owners. Eventually, a trust was set up by the administrators to oversee claims made against the company.

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