CHARLIE Wilson became one of the first recognised victims of the so-called Swindon Disease when he died 27 years ago.

He and his wife Irene had barely 25 years together before he fell to mesothelioma.

There was no champagne celebration on the Wilsons' 25th anniversary. Instead they spent it in hospital a few days before Charlie died, aged just 50.

Charlie, whose real name was Dennis, worked for 34 years at Swindon's railway works as a coppersmith and welder.

His job involved cutting through pipes lagged with deadly asbestos, and it was his exposure to asbestos fibres that led to him developing a cancerous tumour in one of his lungs.

"He could only breathe with one lung and he was in terrible pain," said Irene, now 79 and living in Church Farm, Stratton.

"The doctor at the hospital in Oxford told me it was like having a coating of leather on his lung, so that it just couldn't expand."

Irene said that Charlie, a strong man whom colleagues at the railway works would call for when something heavy needed lifting, "faded away to nothing" by the end of his life.

"It's been 27 years and I still miss him," she said. "I loved his eyes. He had beautiful brown eyes, and he was good to me."

Irene is one of the scores of relatives of Swindon Disease victims who have contributed to the Evening Advertiser's appeal for a memorial garden in Queen's Park.

She said that Charlie would have appreciated a garden memorial, as he loved working in his own garden at their house in Collett Avenue, Rodbourne."My husband loved flowers and I think a garden is a jolly good idea," said Irene.

"We need to have a memorial, because so many people have died of it now. Most of them were older than my husband, so in a way they were luckier than we were. But I wouldn't say anyone who was affected by that disease was lucky."

Mesothelioma has killed so many people in Swindon, many of them workers at the former railway works, that it has gained the name the Swindon Disease.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands have already died here and thousands more Swindonians are likely to be killed by the disease in the next few decades.