Rose Stanfield sold chocolates in Soho

ONE of the troubles with our job in the press is that very often people’s lives are forever defined only by how they die.

People may have done a million of interesting but unheralded things, but they then appear in local and national papers because of some unfortunate end.

It’s worse now because everything is kept online in perpetuity.

Take Rose Stanfield. The only things that ever really got written about her was the fact she was killed in Church Street after being hit by a supermarket truck in 2006.

The 79-year-old typically said “not to worry, I’m fine” to people who came to help her – but sadly died a few minutes later.

She wasn’t just a pensioner who said something awfully British in that sad moment, however.

Many will remember her – without feeling the need to ever say it in print – as the cheery face who sold chocolates down in Soho’s Argyll Street.

So many people knew her, if not always by name, around Lisson Grove where she went to school and, later in life, her haunts around Marylebone.

Nothing made her happier, I’m told, than a sing-song around her piano.