Council not to blame for railway suicide

A brilliant inventor who died under the wheels of a train on the day he was due to be evicted from his home, took his own life, a coroner ruled on Friday.
Peter WilliamsPeter Williams
Peter Williams

Peter Williams couldn’t face losing his home of 30 years in Langford, which contained his cherished laboratory and workshop where he worked daily. He had found himself in debt over an unpaid council tax bill of £1,350.

But because of the efforts of his Mid Beds District Council to go after the money, which saw him made a bankrupt, the debt soared to a staggering £70.000 with legal costs and administration charges.

In a state of desperation on February 8 last year Mr Williams, who was 63 and a diabetic and who had appeared on TV with his invention for a hand dryer, stepped on to the track at Biggleswade Railway Station into the path of a train.

Coroner Martin Oldham recorded a verdict that Mr Williams, who the hearing was told was lonely and “isolated,” had taken his own life whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed. Delivering his verdict the coroner said that he was not attaching any blame to Central Beds Council, previously Mid Beds District Council, who had lawfully set about recovering the debt.

But he said that process, which had resulted in the original debt of £1,350 rising to £70,000, “may strike the man in the street as remarkable.”

The coroner said that while he accepted the medical evidence that Mr Williams was not suffering from any mental illness, he nevertheless was in a state of “stress, anxiety and depression” over the prospect of losing Jubilee Lane house.

He wrote a suicide note blaming the council for his death. But the inquest heard that the council had made repeated attempts since the mid 1990s to come to an agreement with Mr Williams about how to repay the arrears.

After the hearing had ended Mr Williams’ sister, Linda Godfrey, said “I think it is fundamentally wrong that a council can take such action that leads to the eviction of someone over such a small debt and a person is made bankrupt.

“They could have put a charge on the house. If they had done that he would be alive today. I feel this is going to happen again. There will be others that end up taking their lives and that is something that causes me great sadness.”

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