Lilian Irlam, a thirty-year-old British governess for a wealthy, indigenous Jewish family in Alexandria, often bathed at the Mediterranean beach at San Stefano with her friend Fotini Margaritu. One afternoon in August 1903, Lilian and her friend swam out to some rocks. Once there, Lilian removed her swim floats and waded out further. Splashing in the water at a depth she could easily stand in, she was suddenly pulled out by an undercurrent and could not fight the waves. Fotini was caught in the same riptide when she endeavoured to come to Lilian's aid. Eugene Rosenzweig, a sunbather watching the women, ran to find the lifeguard, Bisheer Hassan Chaouich. Bisheer swam out to the women and threw a lifebuoy over Fotini. Lilian had already drowned.

Edward Gould, British Consul in Alexandria, convened a three-man jury to join him in an inquest into Lilian's death. The jury interviewed Fotini, Eugene and Bisheer and ordered a post-mortem to be performed by Arthur Morrison, Consular Surgeon to the British. Dr Morrison examined Lilian's body in the mortuary at the German/British Deaconesses Hospital in Alexandria. Her organs were healthy and her body normal, he noted, aside from the presence of water in her lungs and multiple scratches and contusions, suggesting she had been dragged across the rocks. The inquest concluded with a verdict of accidental death by drowning; the jury included a plea for more lifeguards at San Stefano.

In 1903, the year Lilian died, the British Consulate followed the same procedure in processing her death that had been in place long before the 1882 occupation. Lilian died a British subject, and the British Consular Surgeon examined her. A team of British men collected the data for the inquest reports and processed her for burial. But by 1903, although the procedures remained the same, Lilian's death as a British subject resonated differently than it would have done in previous years. Over the course of the 1890s, as the British colonial authorities consolidated their rule in Egypt, inquests became part of the sharpening of a colonial power structure that was undergirded by the British need both to classify the Egyptians over whom they had assumed control and similarly to categorise the foreign communities who resided in Egypt.