A biomedical student who fell to her death in St Paul's Cathedral had two suicide notes in her hand with one apologising to churchgoers who watched her fall from her “favourite place”, her mother has said.

Devoted Christian Lidia Dragescu, 23, died after falling 100 feet from the Whispering Gallery, which she would visit almost every week, whilst holding two letters in her native Romanian which her mother was later given by police.

The talented figure skater and straight-A pupil, who wanted to be a brain surgeon, had just started a biomedical degree but the university stress had taken its toll and for her the “world has been a bad place to live in”, her family said.

The note to her mother apologised for upsetting her but said that she is now “in a better place”.

It continued: “I am doing this for me, to escape. All of the past and the present it makes my head heavy.”