The partner of a beloved Falmouth man and former docks garage manager who would have turned 90 last week has decried his last weeks of hospital treatment and "dreadful" death.

Margaret Munday, who lived with Wilf Webber for the last ten years of his life, has described the shocking conditions in which she found the man she loved, on a dementia ward she says he should never have been sent to.

She has talked of finding Wilf, who was blind due to macular degeneration, crying for help on an unmade bed, of finding him cold while other patients wore his clothes or slippers, and of finding him on one occasion lying on the floor covered in his own excrement with no nurse around to help him.

Margaret said Wilf had originally gone into the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for a check-up after suffering a fall at home, and was laughing and joking with paramedics as he was put into the ambulance.

Four weeks later, doctors said Wilf had dementia and sectioned him under the mental health act, although Margaret believes a urinary tract infection had caused him to become temporarily confused, and he was sent to Garner Ward at Bodmin Hospital, where he would spend his last five weeks.

She said: "They told me he had been examined by a doctor and has got dementia and is going to Treliske.

"I said no, and they said 'yes, he has been sectioned.'

"He didn't have dementia. When he went into Treliske he was speaking to me like I'm talking to you."

"From that moment on," Margaret said" the nightmare began."

After Wilf was transferred, Margaret described his ward as a place where the doors were locked to every bedroom, including one occasion when she was locked in with Wilf for half an hour and only let out when nurses realised she wasn't one of the patients.

She said: "I went in most days and he was just locked in a bedroom, about eight feet by ten."

"The patients just walked up and down the corridors, crashing and banging and shouting and crying."

Wilf suffered a head injury after falling out of his chair when trying to get up, because he had no-one to assist him.

Margaret said: "They said 'he keeps trying to get up,' I tried to explain that he was blind."

"In five weeks he never had a shower or a bath," she said, although he was a man who was usually scrupulous about cleanliness, "he was washed by the nurses."

She said Wilf was put in the television room every day, in spite of being unable to see, and left there.

On one occasion, she said, she arrived at the TV room, "and there he was, wedged between two sofas."

He was lying on the floor, with his trousers down and a nappy half on, having soiled himself and been unable to get up.

She said: "They assured me they checked on him every 20 minutes."

Wilfe was given laxatives every day, Margaret said, "and he didn't need laxatives."

Margaret claims she was branded a "troublemaker" by staff, because she asked questions about Wilf's care, including how often dressings were changed on injuries to his legs and arms, and about the whereabouts of his clothes. And after she took pictures of Wilf and his living conditions she was followed by a member of staff wherever she went.

She had arranged for staff from Trevern care home in Falmouth to visit Wilf and assess him to be transferred, but he died the day before they were due.

"If we had got him out of that ward he would still be here, and improved. I totally believe that."

Margaret is concerned that the ward is not fulfilling its duty to make sure patients are always monitored by a member of staff, of which there are 12 for 17 patients.

She has spoken to other people who have or had relatives in Garner Ward, and is worried for the welfare of those still inside, especially patients who have no-one to care for them as she did for Wilf.

Breaking into tears, Margaret said: "I should have got him out of there, and he died locked in alone."

Margaret also paid tribute to Wilf, a man who devoted 50 years of service to the Woodlane Social Club, of which he was president, and who was a trusted worker and then manager in the garage of Silley Cox at Falmouth Docks.

Although she had only been with him for the last ten years of his life, she added: "He was a lovely, lovely man, you can ask anybody."

A spokesperson for Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Garner Ward, said: "Unfortunately, we are unable to comment on individual patient cases; we are available to speak in person with anyone who has a question about the care they or a family member has received."