A SENIOR nurse who worked at a hospital at the time of a series of mystery deaths last night broke her silence after a quarter of a century.

Sylvia Sherlock, who emigrated to Australia in 1978, was joint sister in charge of the P1 psychiatric wing of Darlington Memorial Hospital in the summer of 1975 when four patients died within 27 days of each other.

The Northern Echo revealed earlier this month that detectives had launched a major inquiry into the circumstances of the last man to die.

Mrs Sherlock told The Northern Echo she was surprised to learn Durham Police had begun an investigation into the case of 79-year-old Jonathan Longstaff, who burned to death in his bed.

The other patients who died were Rosemary Gibson, 21, of a drugs overdose, Patricia Lupton, 22, who drowned in her bath, and George Charters, 21, who gassed himself in a hospital van.

Although not on duty on any of those days, Mrs Sherlock said she remembered the incidents and the stresses placed on staff in the fallout which followed.

Speaking from her home in the outskirts of Melbourne, Mrs Sherlock said: "I remember the night Mr Longstaff died.

"I remember that it was a warm evening and all the windows were open in the dormitory, as was the door opposite. All the smoke just went out of the windows and the detectors didn't go off at all.

"It was only when a night charge was doing his round that he saw Mr Longstaff's bed was just a blazing inferno.

"I don't remember the night charge's name, but it finished him - he was just a wreck.

"You would not forget a sight like that."

Police decided to look at the case again after a relative who believes there were inaccuracies in the initial inquiry passed on a committee report which had come into her possession.

But Mrs Sherlock said: "I'm very surprised that it's being looked at again.

"There was a coroner's inquest at the time and I would have thought everything would have been said at that point.

"The story was that Mr Longstaff had sent another patient down the street to purchase some lighter fuel and that was used to set the bed alight.

"But it was Mr Longstaff who did it. There was never any suggestion that it was anything other than that."

The deaths led to wholesale changes in the way the department was run and to the resignation of unit head, Dr Eric Burkitt.

Mrs Sherlock, 61, said: "Everybody was deeply upset by what happened.

"I'm retired now, but right up to that point I was very conscious of what could happen inside psychiatric hospitals and carried a certain amount of anxiety with me for the rest of my career."