Dead in bed and undiscovered for 20 years!

[RallyRallyAppreciateIt]

He had family, yet this man lay dead in bed for 20 years. So awful for them to think for all those years that he had gone nc, only to discover he had actually died and no one knew!

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/cork-inquest-hears-mans-body-lay-undiscovered-for-20-years-1543934.html#:~:text=He%20was%20discovered%20under%20a,allow%20Rentokil%20to%20go%20in.

Yes I’ve been an English blow-in in small town Ireland. The most isolating and lonely time of my life.

I always find these stories strange. Did the postman not notice huge piles of mail?

Miss a payment for council tax bailiffs come knocking. How did the council allow 20 years of unpaid rates?

@FufuTime why don’t you go and visit your brother? He is free to build relationships with you but as he has special needs it’s a big ask for him to just visit you.

Poor man, such a desperately sad thing to happen.

This reminds me of the terrible case which is often in my mind of the mum and young son who died in London maybe four years ago. She had a seizure and her sweet boy, who was non-verbal and had learning needs, couldn’t do anything to alert anyone. He died about 10 days after her. It was one of the most tragic and horrifying cases I’ve ever read. So many people have no one watching out for them. RIP

It was a different era obviously, but it’s extremely odd not to have reported him as a missing person in the UK and Ireland - at least after a year or so. After didn’t bob up again after a couple of years, knowing the house was boarded up, it’s equally odd not to have double checked it had been checked.

I can see how it happened, but they are pushing it to be hurt.

as per a PP, yes, when my new bed got delivered, I remarked to the young chap delivering it "there's a good chance I'll die in that bed you know".

Shows I'm old now, that to me beds = ill/dying rather than sexy time.

That is heartbreaking.

Jesus that IS awful.

Strange how so many assume that he had a peaceful and/or quick death. He could have had a paralysing stroke and died of dehydration over several days or more. He could have had severe pneumonia or another serious infection, been unable to get out of bed and was left delirious until dying of organ failure. So many horrible things.
But we prefer to imagine he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. With only the skeleton left we will never know.
I hope he rests in peace and that his family experience some relief from finally having a funeral.

Yes, totally agree. Surely, if the council is going to board up a house, they should check it thoroughly first??

No council tax in Ireland.
There's property tax, but that was only introduced about 10 years ago.

We don't have rates in Ireland 😐

It's a very sad story. When I read the headline, I assumed the poor man had no family. I was surprised to read that he had four siblings. However, it appears that one of his sisters lives in Australia and his brother (now deceased) lived in the UK. The deceased man grew up in England and moved to Ireland in his '50s. He didn't go to school or university in Ireland and I haven't read anything to suggest that he worked in Ireland. So he had no social networks to fall back on when his mother died and his marriage ended. The family went on holidays in Kerry over the years and his sister lives there. But he chose to settle in Cork. He may well have been suffering from depression, despite what the family have said.

What really surprises me is that nobody in the family insisted on the Gardaí breaking into the house to confirm if their brother was there or not. Everybody seems to have gone along with the narrative that he had moved back to the UK.

It wasn't a Council property so the Council had no reason to get involved. If it was a Council tenancy, the house would have been re-possessed at some point due to non-payment of rent and staff would probably have entered the property to clear it out and get it ready to re-let. Likewise, if it was a private tenancy, the landlord would have undertaken legal proceedings due to non-payment of rent. Because it was a private residence, the house only came to the attention of Cork County Council in 2014 when a local councillor contacted them about a broken window and asked if the Council could establish who owned it. He was already dead 13 years at that point.

@Custardslices, the article says it was not clear who owned the house. The land registry yielded no information for the county council. So whatever taxes may have been owed (and things in Ireland are different from the UK) may have been paid from some estate or trust account with nobody physically writing a cheque.

That being said, the coroner (iirc) did remark that there are well over 100K derelict houses in Ireland, and there may well be similar scenes inside some of them, especially in the wake of covid. Additionally, it was remarked that the compulsory purchase process is slow and cumbersome.

Nevertheless, a wellbeing check by the gardai should have been carried out at the smallest whiff of a strange disappearance. They should not have shrugged and assumed he had gone back to England. I think serious questions need to be asked of the gardai in Mallow.

(Also, the post was piled up inside the house, so it was pushed through a mail slot. The house was sited right off the pavement, with no front garden, so any flyers, etc, left halfway in the slot or outside the door could have been blown away ornpushed through by passers-by.)

His sister did and went to the local police station to make enquiries. I think the mistake she made was that she didn't initiate a formal missing persons enquiry. Just accepted the reasoning that he must have moved to England if he wasn't in Ireland.

Well, the police were at mistake here. Does Ireland not have a system of where who went or wher?! Flights and ferries?

Sad. People left for dead. 3 years!

Fuck...

It's happened here. But flats. So the smell...

it’s extremely odd not to have reported him as a missing person in the UK and Ireland - at least after a year or so.

It's not - they didn't think he was missing. The loss of contact was surprising but not totally unexpected either.

I can think of two scenarios I know personally where someone did just leave, and cut contact. No particular falling out in either. One man was someone who travelled a lot but just didn't come back from one of his trips. They knew he was alive at that point through other contacts he had. They also knew then he was teaching at a university. For a while there were very intermittent emails. Then no contact.

They did follow up via the Irish embassy & were told he was alive but that was all. But as years passed, they'd no other information so he could have been dead.

I have an uncle who for many years lived a very remote & disconnected life. Not to this extent but trying to make contact with him was very challenging (very rural, no phone). Actually in his older years, getting a mobile phone is what helped the family have at least some contact.

It's really not as unusual, especially at the time - which doesn't make it any more sad, or the issues that it raises less important.

Come Out Ye Black and Tans

This is what will happen to me. I will die at home and no one will notice for months and months.

Because he was your good friend, and you investigated. Tim O’Sullivan doesn’t appear to have had friends, he was distant enough from his siblings for them not to have known when he married and moved to Ireland, and for one sister to have only become alarmed about his welfare when she didn’t get an annual Christmas card. It’s a sad story, but it’s easy to see how it happened.

It happened to a lot of Irish people, mostly men, who went to London, Birmingham, Manchester in the 50s and 60s and fell out of contact with home, and often died alone. I once went to the cremation of an elderly man in London because a medic friend had been there when he died in hospital and mentioned it — DH and I were the only people there, and a priest.

Why would that be? 😟

It sounds like the sister did, effectively, report him missing though? She certainly contacted the police and said no one knew where he was. It's not unreasonable to think that they would treat that as a missing person report.

Bearing in mind this gentleman would be early 80s now, were he still alive, I can quite see that his siblings may well be of a generation where they wouldn't question a police officer telling them he'd moved back to England. My GMs would certainly trust a police officer absolutely, they'd assume they would have done 'whatever it is police officers do to check these things', and wouldn't think it their place to second guess an expert.

My work brings me into contact with many cases like this. It's standard to ask 'didn't anyone care? Shouldn't someone have visited?' but nobody is obliged to let visitors in.

The truth is there are many people who don't seek out human company, who don't want anyone else in their house, and even when red flags arise they don't want to engage with sources of support.

And all of this is their right, whether we find it odd or weird or not.

Autistic. Live alone. No friends. No social life. Mainly work from home. Can go a week or more without actually interacting with a human being (besides my mum). Etc, etc.

It won’t be until my parents are gone. I speak to my mum everyday and my dad by proxy. But yes, once they’re gone. I will prepare for that eventuality.

Small chance the man that does my garden may get pissed off and raise some sort of an alarm after a few months possibly if he’s not getting paid, but not sure.

@PostItInABook that sounds really sad. Could you reach out to social services, look into sheltered accommodation? I sense you are not happy at your level of isolation. Would the autistic society have some support to offer? Sorry if what I’m suggesting isn’t realistic.