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Original poster

Not seen neighbours in weeks lights and heating on

351 replies

stillwaitingonaring · 13/01/2022 10:14

Been thinking to myself the last week or so how weird it is that we haven't seen the neighbours in weeks probably coming up to a month now. Every single light on in the house and heating on all day and night.

They have had lots of police involvement in the past, she had 4 older children with learning difficulties police were being called out so many times a week. Her children are normally jumping on the car roof slamming doors etc. Not seen or heard a peep from them since mid December. I always felt sorry for her because it seemed like she couldn't cope with all of them in that small house they were running her ragged.

I knocked on yesterday morning and obviously no answer, is this something you would report to the police or just leave it?

OP posts:
Rosscameasdoody · 14/01/2022 11:10

@Workingfromhomenow

Does anyone else come to check our messages but then get distracted by the Trending threads at the top of the page and waste time reading about random stuff?
All the time !!
mam0918 · 14/01/2022 11:21

Haven't read the whole thread but are the curtains open so you can see in?

If the windows are blocked/blacked out it sounds like cannabis growing (heat and light have to be on for the plants) and people don't tend to live in the houses so they are empty often with someone just stopping by to check often late at night etc...

Maybe they moved quickly (as a kid a friend of my family packed up and disappeared overnight, only decided to move 24 hours earlier) and maybe the new tenant is running a growing business (so no 'movers' moving in furniture and friendly introductions etc...).

CaptainMyCaptain · 14/01/2022 11:24

[quote Tippexy]Not quite true @SchadenfreudePersonified

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Vincent[/quote]
Such a sad story.

FireworkParrot · 14/01/2022 11:33

She was only a young woman IIRC - 30's - and was dead with a lot of wrapped Christmas presents for friends and family, so had a social group, and no-one - NOT ONE PERSON - had bothered to see where she was.

She'd cut contact with her family and was being housed in a flat for victims of domestic abuse. Apparently her sisters had tried to track her down and they hired a private investigator who did find her address but it was after she had died so when her sisters wrote to her and received no reply they'd assumed she didn't want to be in contact with them anymore.

I just find it desperately sad that she was dead for that amount of time, with Christmas wrapping around her and unopened letters from her family piling up.

Youdoyoutoday · 14/01/2022 11:43

@Gargellen

I would ask the police to do a welfare check.

Reminds me of the woman that had been dead in her flat for four years with the telly going day and night. The neighbours said that in retrospect, it did seem odd.

She was only discovered because her bank account had run out of money for her rent payments to fail.

That's terribly sad! Poor woman
Roosk · 14/01/2022 11:44

She was only a young woman IIRC - 30's - and was dead with a lot of wrapped Christmas presents for friends and family, so had a social group, and no-one - NOT ONE PERSON - had bothered to see where she was.

Except it wasn't like that. Her sisters tried to trace her via the Salvation Army and hired a private detective who found her address, but as she didn't respond when they wrote to her, they assumed she was deliberately breaking ties with them. She had a long history of cutting people out of her life when she moved address and/or job (which she did frequently, tending to move on at any sign of conflict with a colleague/trouble). She moved flat around London all the time. She had no longterm friends, because she tended to take up with people she met via a new job or flatshare.

She'd long stopped answering the phone to her sisters, she'd had at least one abusive relationship and spent time in a domestic violence refuge, and when she was in hospital not long before she died being treated for a peptic ulcer that may have been what killed her, she gave her next of kin as her bank manager. No one knows who the wrapped Christmas presents were intended for -- some people have suggested they were bought for herself.

Who knows what her MH was like, but her solitude was at least in part something she sought out.

SleepingStandingUp · 14/01/2022 11:44

I remember that - it was a heartbreaking account.

She was only a young woman IIRC - 30's - and was dead with a lot of wrapped Christmas presents for friends and family, so had a social group, and no-one - NOT ONE PERSON - had bothered to see where she was.

It broke my heart when I read it.

How does that even happen? How do you just think "oh well I didn't hear from X over Xmas, well screw her, I'm not going to bother then". Friends possibly but work and family??

SchadenfreudePersonified · 14/01/2022 12:27

[quote Tippexy]Not quite true @SchadenfreudePersonified

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Vincent[/quote]
Thank you Tippexy - I hadn't seen this account.

All I could remember was that she was surrounded by Christmas gifts, and that her death had gone unnoticed because here bills were paid by direct debit and her bank account was healthy enough. This link certainly gives more details.

It's still heartbreakingly poignant, though.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 14/01/2022 12:31

Thank you all who have commented on the death of Joyce Vincent. I was remembering from back in the day when her death was reported in the papers, and there wasn't so much detail. It is very sad, whatever the circumstances.

ThePlumVan · 14/01/2022 13:04

@Roosk did you know her personally?
I remember how sad it was and thinking why didn’t family and friends go looking, but your account puts a completely different light on the circumstances.
She had a right to live her life as she chose fit.

Eggshausted · 14/01/2022 13:15

Better to be safe than sorry. I would contact Police in a case like this too. I think the OPdid the right thing.

SandyPanda · 14/01/2022 13:25

I hope they're just moved and all is well.

Roosk · 14/01/2022 13:28

[quote ThePlumVan]@Roosk did you know her personally?
I remember how sad it was and thinking why didn’t family and friends go looking, but your account puts a completely different light on the circumstances.
She had a right to live her life as she chose fit.[/quote]
No, not at all, but I lived not far from where she was living when her body was discovered, and was aware of the press coverage and, slightly later on, I was aware of the film maker Carol Morley's poster and SM campaign to find out more about her. I saw the film when it came out., and was aware of her family's disagreement with the way her life was portrayed in it. The stuff I said above is all in the public domain.

People (understandably) seem to pick up on the 'No one bothered to check on her' and 'Her skeleton sat there, surrounded by people in the other flats in close proximity, for years, watching TV' stuff, like a parable about the anonymity of city living, or modern alienation, but it was a bit more complex than that, I think.

www.theguardian.com/film/2011/oct/09/joyce-vincent-death-mystery-documentary

Letsallscreamatthesistene · 14/01/2022 14:02

I remember watching a documentary about her (may have been the film? Not sure), but she flitted from one social group to the next. She seemed to integrate herself into other peoples friendship groups, then move on quite quickly so nobody ever felt she needed checking on. I think everyone just assumed she'd moved on again.

Cattenberg · 14/01/2022 15:04

One of my exes used to live on a main road and I walked past his houses most days. I noticed that he’d left his lights on day and night for at least two days, so I phoned the police.

The police managed to get hold of him, and phoned me with the update that they’d spoken to him. I’m guessing he just went away for a few days. Maybe I should have tried to phone him myself, but I doubt he would have answered as we weren’t on speaking terms.

I still think I did the right thing. A few years earlier the police were asked to do a welfare check on one of my friends, who was an alcoholic. Sadly, his story did not have a happy ending. His on-off girlfriend was distraught, but relieved she wasn’t the one to find him.

Cattenberg · 14/01/2022 15:05

I forgot to add that I did knock on my ex’s door and had no answer.

Pluvia · 14/01/2022 15:58

Roosk, thank you for setting the record straight. I lived in Crouch End and occasionally shopped in Wood Green (Joyce's flat was over the Shopping City) and I was aware of the investigation at the time. I also saw Carol Morley's film years later. No one, not even men who'd had quite long (years) relationships with her, felt that she had ever allowed them to get to know her. They didn't meet her family and as you say, she moved flats/ flatshares every year and didn't tell people where she'd gone. She was also assumed by everyone, because she was very sociable and attractive, always in work and moving in quite up-market circles (I think she worked at Goldman Sachs) to be one of those people who would always be all right and had moved on from them to something better. I got the feeling from the interviews I heard at the time (confirmed by the Carol Morley piece in the Guardian) that Joyce was the one who left people behind.

I'd hate her sisters, or the people who cared for her, to read all the 'how can people abandon those they claim to love' stuff. It wasn't like that. Lots of us will have had people who've entered our lives for a year or two, left a big impression but then moved on. Some people are butterflies. Some people have stuff going on under the surface that you have no idea about.

Nannewnannew · 14/01/2022 16:28

@Pluvia well said.

Bluebluemoon39 · 14/01/2022 16:32

Haven't rtft. As someone who sees this kind of thing quite often in my line of work (ie people doing a moonlight flit) I would suggest they have "done a runner" owing a backlog of rent or possibly having people after them that they owe money to.

You'd be surprised how many people just leave almost everything behind - if you ever watch something like Bad Tenants, Slum Landlord you see it all the time - the bailiffs or landlord gain entry everything's just been left (usually because they leave in a rush and/or can't afford a removal van.

Nothing to be lost by reporting it though.

IDidntKnowItWasAParty · 14/01/2022 17:34

@Roosk yes I read that too about Joyce Vincent, that her family had hired a private detective to try to find her. So it's not true that no one tried to find her. (She seemed to be sort of in hiding as well, from whoever had abused her hence her going to a DV refuge from which she was placed in that flat.)
But I only read that in one article about her - the rest indicated that she had been abandoned by everyone.

Therobloxguy · 14/01/2022 17:47

there probably banging all the way to pound town

riceuten · 14/01/2022 18:14

@stillwaitingonaring

I've heard so many horror stories like that I think I remember hearing about the Joyce Vincent too.

I'm starting to think it's probably down to rent arrears and they just upped and left but then I am sure you have to wait to get an eviction notice until council re house you? I would of thought HA would of been making a ton of visits too if that was case.

People do do midnight flits and think if they leave the lights and heating on, they will get one step ahead of the landlord. So that's also a possibility.

The Joyce Vincent case was really sad, as she wasn't missed and was estranged from most of her family. The only reason she was discovered was because the Housing Association property she lived in was paid for by Housing Benefit (in these pre-UC times) and the claim lapsed (Councils require you to renew them theoretically every 6 months or so), so, as the rent was then unpaid, the HA moved to evict her. It was discovered that tenants of the same block had complained about the smell, and flies in the window, but the HA didn't do anything.

The TV was found on, and she was surrounded by Xmas presents, which broke my heart. It looked as if she had had a heart attack brought on by an asthma attack.

There was a record made by Steve Wilson called "Hand. Cannot. Erase." based on her life story.

DragonMamma · 14/01/2022 18:32

I watched a documentary on Joyce Vincent a few years back and they said she was well liked but had form for just going AWOL and then reappearing so nobody suspected she’d done anything other than that again.

Very sad 😞

Roosk · 14/01/2022 18:35

[quote IDidntKnowItWasAParty]@Roosk yes I read that too about Joyce Vincent, that her family had hired a private detective to try to find her. So it's not true that no one tried to find her. (She seemed to be sort of in hiding as well, from whoever had abused her hence her going to a DV refuge from which she was placed in that flat.)
But I only read that in one article about her - the rest indicated that she had been abandoned by everyone.[/quote]
I think she was the person who ‘abandoned’ other people, from whatever motives.

Of her family, all that’s in the public domain is that they attended the inquest, had tried to trace her and hired a detective but concluded when she didn’t respond to a letter that she’d decided to cut contact — as she’d done before. She had only her four sisters, as her mother died when she was a child and her father was estranged, and her sisters apparently brought her up. I think I read somewhere that none of them lived in the UK when they were traced, and as her parents were immigrants from Grenada, there may not have been any UK extended family. I think Joyce was the only one of them who was born in the UK.

And the thing that virtually all her former friends and boyfriends who agreed to talk on the documentary was that they’d assumed she moved on and up from them — she was bright, beautiful, ambitious, sociable, had glossy City jobs and upmarket tastes etc. Several of them said they’d heard about the skeletal remains being found, but had never connected it with Joyce. They said they couldn’t imagine the women they’d known living on benefits in a HA bedsit and dying alone. One did say he wasn’t surprised she’d fled domestic violence as men had behaved weirdly and possessively around her before. They all said she was an elusive person and that they’d assumed she had an ‘inner circle’ of friends she knew much better than them.

sueelleker · 14/01/2022 19:34

@SanFranBear

Friend noticed a horrendous smell coming from the flat next door and hadn't seen or heard his neighbour in some time. Called the police who, on arrival, said to brace himself as they recognised the smell.

Turned out the neighbour had done a bunk but left a joint of meat on the side in the kitchen which had obviously started to rot. Whilst obviously not what was expected, the police still made it clear my friend had done the right thing as they had been convinced they were going to find the neighbour in a bad way.

I think Dorothy Sayers wrote a short story like this, but it was kippers that had been left out.