UK - 'Model tenant' lay dead in his flat for two years until cleaners found remains

[wfgodot]

Not a unique story, but always slightly startling, and saddening.

Man lay dead in his flat for two years until cleaners turned up to clear his home (Daily Mail)

A loner lay dead in his city centre flat for two years after no one realised he had passed away, an inquest heard.
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His skeletal remains - wearing just a pair of socks - were found lying behind an armchair in the living room of the flat in Brighton, East Sussex, in November.
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Neighbours said there had been a 'musty smell' in the hallway outside the flat before his body was found, but nothing more unusual than that.

Police said they believed that Mr Allen had died in December 2010 when he would have been aged around 50.
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Police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death and it was impossible to say how he died.

Coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley said she was 'particularly saddened' that a relatively young man had not been missed.
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'It seems that he chose his somewhat reclusive lifestyle.'
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more at the link, with a picture of the ill-fated Mr. Allen

 

[oh_gal]

That is beyond sad, that the poor guy lay there for 2 years, and no one cared enough to even check on him.

 

[Perodicticus potto]

Very sad. Reminds me of Joyce Carol Vincent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I once had a conversation about this sort of thing with a colleague of Indian descent who had grown up in East Africa. One of her neighbours here in London had died and hadn't been discovered for a few days. My colleague told me it would have been unthinkable for that to have happened in the community where she grew up - people were always in and out of each other's houses, and everyone knew what their neighbours were doing. But British culture is very different. I don't even know most of my neighbours' names.

(Mind you, my colleague did say it was sometimes a relief not to have everyone in town minding her business!)

 

[tlcya]

I have looked at this thread title all day and haven't come in to post til now. The thread title alone is enough. Poor, sad, alone fellow. It breaks my heart when I read that someone passed and not a single person noticed their absence. RIP Sir.

 

[PMLsmom]

Didn't read the article, but who was paying household bills for two years??? Water, electricity, etc? What about mail delivery?

 

[Perodicticus potto]

Didn't read the article, but who was paying household bills for two years??? Water, electricity, etc? What about mail delivery?

In Britain, we tend to pay our bills by Direct Debit (automatic withdrawal from bank account). So as long as there was enough money in his account when he died to cover the bills, they would have been paid without interruption. Mail is usually delivered through a slot in the door, rather than to a mailbox, so the postman wouldn't necessarily have noticed that mail was piling up.

 

[Donjeta]

He had several months of unpaid rent when he was found.

There was a case here a few years back, someone had died seven years ago and the first person to notice was the mailman because he couldn't fit any more post through the slot in the door because of the high pile that had been collected.