Donoghue V Stevenson - Subsequent Events

Subsequent Events

The legal basis for the claim now settled, the case was returned to the Court of Session for a hearing scheduled for January 1933. In the hearing, Donoghue would have to prove the factual elements of the case that she had claimed, including that there had been a snail in the ginger beer as a result of Stevenson's negligence and that this snail had caused her illness. However, Stevenson died on 12 November 1932, aged 69. One year later, Stevenson's executors were listed as third-party defendants to the case. However, the claim was settled out of court in December 1934 for, according to Leechman's son, £200 of the £500 originally claimed.

Donoghue had moved to 101 Maitland Street with her son, Henry, around February 1931; he moved out when he married in 1937, after which she moved to 156 Jamieson Street. She continued to work as a shop assistant. In February 1945, Donoghue divorced her husband, from whom she had separated in 1928 and who now had two sons by another woman, and reverted to using her maiden name. She died of a heart attack on 19 March 1958, at the age of 59, in Gartloch Mental Hospital, where she had probably been staying for a short period of time as a result of mental illness. Although she is listed on her death certificate as May McAllister, she was by then commonly known as Mabel Hannah, having adopted her mother's maiden name and the first name of her daughter, who had died when she was eleven days old.

Stevenson's business was taken over by his widow, Mary, and his son, the third David Stevenson in the family. It became a limited company (David Stevenson (Beers and Minerals) Limited) on 1 July 1950; the family sold their shares in 1956. The Glen Lane manufacturing plant was demolished in the 1960s.

The Wellmeadow Café, where the snail had been found, closed around 1931; the building was demolished in 1959. Minghella, its owner, subsequently became a labourer; he died on 20 March 1970.