An inmate has died following a medical episode at HMP Styal in Cheshire. The woman was taken to hospital after reportedly suffering a cardiac arrest at the jail on Friday.
She died in hospital this morning. An investigation has now been launched, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has confirmed.
It is the second death at the all-female jail near Wilmslow in a month and the seventh since 2018.
Read more: Young woman who fell to her death from Stockport tower block is named
A source at the prison said the woman suffered suffered a cardiac arrest in the prison on Friday and was taken to hospital. She had been housed on the mental health wing when she became unwell.
The inmate had only arrived at the prison last week. She was two days into her first prison sentence when she became ill, according to the source.
Today (Monday) a spokeswoman for MoJ confirmed brief details of the death and said an investigation has been launched. Neither the age nor the name of the inmate has been released.
Last month the prison confirmed that inmate Eileen McDonagh died in custody at the jail on Saturday July 2.
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, an independent body that investigates death in custody, is investigating both fatalities.
HMP Styal, a former orphanage, was first opened as a women’s prison in 1962 to serve female inmates from Strangeways prison in Manchester.
Annelise Sanderson, 18, died at the prison on December 22, 2020. Nicola Birchall, 41, died while in custody at HMP Styal in February 2018. On June 4, 2018, Imogen Mellor, 29, died at the prison.
Christine MacDonald, 56, was found collapsed in her cell while serving a sentence at the women’s prison on March 3, 2019. She was taken to Wythenshawe Hospital where she later died.
Susan Knowles, 48, died at HMP Styal on May 10, 2019.
On June 18, 2020, imate Louise Powell, 30, gave birth to a stillborn child in her cell block toilet. A watchdog has found a prison nurse incorrectly concluded Louise Powell, who didn't know she was pregnant, was merely suffering severe period pain.
A band of mothers mounted a protest outside the prison last month to mark the second anniversary of the incident.
They are campaigning for an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women. Louise had been serving an eight-month sentence for common assault, criminal damage and using threatening words or behaviour when she delivered the stillborn infant, who she named Brooke Leigh Powell.
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