The Eviction and I am made Homeless
The maisonette flat 74 Main Street in Egremont, where I lived, had belonged to my youngest brother Stephen. When he died in 1991 it's ownership passed to my mother Mrs Jean Sharpe. I moved into the flat along with my mother and her cat in 1998. When my mother moved out in 2000, I paid rent to her as her tenant. I continued to live in the flat from 2000 up to my mother's death in 2006. As described elsewhere, this flat became the property of my brother Edwin in 2007. My brother obtained title to the property 74 Main Street in a contact drawn up by his solicitors Bleasdale & Co, who were acting at Edwin's instruction. In this contract, the period of permitted residence for me allowed by Edwin at the flat in Egremont expired on 31st December 2008. My brother Edwin came round to the flat in the first week of the New Year 2009 expecting me to have moved out, saying he had some tenants lined up who were due to move in. He said the rental income from the flat was his "pension". I told him I had no place to go. I was ill. He told me I was "pissing him about", but he reluctantly decided that I could stay in the flat if I paid over to him £400 per month. I was too ill to leave and I was too ill to argue. The next day my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) intervened and phoned my brother on his mobile, which seemed to smooth matters. There was no written tenancy agreement. I was seriously ill and still quite suicidal, and I simply posted a cheque to my brother each month to keep him away from me. I made these payments under duress and, frankly, fear. These payments continued until I ran out of money. I was not claiming Housing Benefit. I paid £2390 to my brother in total up to 31st June 2009. Details of these payments are recorded in the statements of bank accounts (71A and 71B).
Unfortunately my CPN Rodney became ill in February 2009, and was replaced. My new contact was Ivan, who was sympathetic. However, he was a student social worker and he returned to college. At this point my contact with the Copeland Community Mental Health Team was interrupted.
On Friday 31st July 2009 my brother Edwin knocked at the door to the flat in Egremont at around 1.00 o'clock in the afternoon. I opened the door and he barged past me and went into the living room and looked around. I followed him into the living room and he said “What about the rent? Look at the state of this place”. He demanded a set of keys, which I handed over. He looked into the kitchen (which was in fact clean) and started to visibly boil with rage. He returned to the living room and worked himself up into a rage and then he started kicking and throwing about the furniture which included kicking the door to the book case off its hinges. He picked up my laptop computer from the desk and asked “Does this work?” then smashed it down. It was then broken. He then picked up a chair and held it over my head threatening to bring it down on me. I was stood against the front window of the flat overlooking the Main Street of Egremont, where people across the road could see in. Instead of bringing the chair down on me, he instead threw the chair into the television, which was carried backward into the wall but somehow did not shatter. I was terrified but too ill to run away. He then checked that the keys to the lock of the front door worked and issued an ultimatum: "Get out of this flat by tomorrow or I'll be round to batter you". As he left he told me to post my set of the keys through the letterbox once I'd vacated the flat.
When he’d gone I lay in bed worrying about what I would do next. Going to the police had proved useless before when I had sought protection from my brother. I knew my brother to be serious in his threat. After all £400 rent for the month was due, and in my brother's world money means everything, and he wanted the flat. I got up early the next day, Saturday 1st August 2009. I was again suicidal and rigged up a noose in the bathroom using my dressing-gown cord this time instead of a neck-tie. I inserted my head into and then I tightened the noose on my neck, but then decided at the last moment, as a last throw of the dice, to try telephone an old friend in Scotland to see if he could put me up for a few days. I picked up my mobile phone and my RBS bank card and, at 10.00am before my brother might call round to “batter” me, I walked out down the stairs and into a sunny day on Egremont Main Street. I caught the bus to Whitehaven to get out of Egremont before my brother came round to batter me. When in Whitehaven I was at a loss. I wandered around looking at buildings. I telephoned my friend in Scotland, but he was not at home but at a conference, so I caught the train from Whitehaven to Carlisle. I felt safe, away from my brother. As the train slowed and approached Wigton, with no plan in mind, and on the spur of the moment, I decided to alight in Wigton and check out Wigton town. I booked into a public house for the night and had my first pint of beer for two and a half years.
After two nights in Wigton, I walked the 10 miles to Whitrigg House Farm near Kirkbride to see my father's younger sister, my Aunt Ida, where she along with her husband Brian are dairy farmers. On the afternoon of 3rd August 2009, I arrived at my Aunt Ida's farm. Whilst having tea and cakes in the dining room, my brother phoned me on my mobile, and I walked out into the farmyard to take the call which I assumed would be as unpleasant as always. He informed me of his intention to "gut the flat" at Egremont, by which he meant he intended to remove all the contents from and then empty the flat. He asked what should be done with my "stuff", by which was meant the total sum of my life's possessions which remained in the flat. I asked for him to leave these with Mr Tapan Mukherjee, the resident of the next door flat at 75 Main Street in Egremont. The belongings I was forced to leave at 74 Main Street included all my papers such as my original birth certificate, my bank and my tax details. My belongings also included my personal photograph collections dating back to my childhood at Desmense Farm at Sandwith in the late 1950's and early 1960's, my golf clubs, my PhD theses, my Russian decanter and Woburn tankard, it included my coin and stamp collections, my library, my wardrobe (which included several suits and a £300 great coat), my swiss watch, everything I owned, and it included immensely emotional items such as school metal-work projects I had brought home for my mother at age 11 yrs old and items such as the prayer book given to me by my mother at my christening in Gosforth Village Church in which she had also fastened a lock of my infant hair at age one year old. This latter object was to be one of the last possessions my mother was to gaze through on the occasion of her last visit to see me in Egremont.
I stayed with my Aunt Ida in Whitrigg for one night. I did not discuss with my Aunt what had occurred between myself and my brother, since I did not wish to upset her with such a sorry story. Neither had I informed my Aunt Ida at any point of the mental problems I had been having, and nor did I that day. The next day my Aunt drove me into Carlisle where I went to see my dermatologist, Professor Cox, to have some photos taken of my skin problem. (My brother Edwin has always despised me for having a skin condition.) I stayed in Carlisle in the Youth Hostel and in B&B's for six days, during which time on Sunday lunch-time I met Nellie, my Grandfather's widow, and her daughter Josephine, my mother's half-sister. Again I did not mention the trouble between myself and my brother for fear of causing upset. Nellie is 90 years old. Nor did I mention to them anything about the mental health problems I had been having.
From Carlisle, I then set off by bus to Edinburgh to meet my friend at the Festival. He drove me to his home, where I stayed as a guest for a little over a week. I went to the pub on Friday night. Whilst in Scotland my lower legs and ankles swelled up and took on a purple skin rash. I visited Dr Ian Mathewson, a G.P. at the Feddinch Medical Practice. After he had examined me he diagnosed me with "essential malignant hypertension". He warned me that I could "collapse at any moment". He started me on the appropriate medication. He suspected there were other deeper issues and he questioned me on my history. I discussed with him the mental health problems I had been suffering in recent years, to which he listened with interest and offered quite sensible and amusing advice. He asked what I intended doing with the rest of my life and he suggested that the journey I had embarked on was rather metaphysical, by its circumstance. He gave me the telephone number and address of his contact at Fife Social Services for me to find somewhere to live, but this contact proved of no use.
I decided not to stay in Scotland. After rather more than a week I returned to Carlisle, then Wigton again and then St Bees, staying all the while in B&B's, and drawing on my RBS bank account. Although this account was overdrawn, the ATM's continued to dispense cash. While in St Bees I visited some old friends, but I did not share with these people any details of the problems I had suffered at my brother's hands. In St Bees I visited my parent's and youngest brother's grave in the church graveyard. On leaving St Bees on 21st August 2009 I travelled over to Egremont in the morning to see my G.P. Dr Peter Winterbottom at Beech House Surgery who gave me a check-up to see if my kidneys were coping with the new medication "ACE inhibitors" I had been started on in Scotland. There is a risk of renal stenosis. He said I looked much better than when he had first encountered me in June 2008 after my hanging attempt, apart from my weight gain. He asked about my future and wished me luck. In the afternoon I travelled to Whitehaven where I saw Mrs Gillian Reid of Copeland Borough Council's Homeless unit. She agreed that it was more than likely that I had been evicted illegally from the flat in Egremont by my brother, and her colleague suggested they might be able to look into the whereabouts of my possessions (78A). Mrs Reid did not offer to recognise me as homeless. I then visited my Advisor at the Whitehaven Jobcentre and we arranged that I should use her at the Jobcentre as a forwarding address while I continued to be of "no fixed abode". As I left Whitehaven, I bumped into a Copeland Borough Councillor who listened to my story and he quoted Matthew Chapter 10, "shake the dust from your sandals and go" as we say good-bye.
With only the clothes I was standing-up in, and my mobile phone, my RBS bank ATM card and a plastic carrier bag with a change of shirt in it and a photograph of me aged 21 which my mother had kept on her bedroom dressing-table, I continued my journey which took me on to Cockermouth, Keswick and then Windermere. Emotionally, I felt as if I had been the survivor of a ship-wreck, with all my worldly goods and possessions "at the bottom of the sea". I felt as if I'd come through my own private Auschwitz. I left the South Lakes and caught rides down to London, where I stayed with friends in New Cross Gate.
My medical records for the period from 09 April 2007 to 11 September 2009 have been obtained (80A). I have summarised the salient points of this medical record (80B).
On 3rd August 2009, when he telephoned me while I was at my Aunt's farm, I had asked Edwin to leave my property with Tapan Mukherjee at 75 Main Street. Mr Mukherjee has reported that none of my property has been left with him (81A). On 15th December 2009 the Housing Solicitor at CAB wrote to my brother asking him to hand over these items of my property to Mrs Carol Wray of 3 Victoria Terrace in St Bees for safe-keeping (81B). However, nothing has happened.
I have since been in touch with PC Ben Strain of Egremont Police Station to ask about my property at the flat. PC Strain emailed me on 01/12/2009 (82A) to say that he had contacted my brother. PC Strain had phoned Edwin, who in reply told PC Strain that he had bought the contents as part of the flat, that the paintings and furniture belonged to him and that in fact I owed him £410 in “back rent”. PC Ben Strain told me that it had been decided that this was not a criminal matter unless I was able to provide receipts for what I was alleging was my property. It was a civil matter and PC Strain would not intervene. PC Strain said my brother had cleared out the flat and sent my clothes to Age Concern, but that some stamps and coins had been kept back on a temporary basis if I wanted to go and collect them now. This would most probably involve getting my head kicked in.
On 9th February 2011 Legal Services Manager Mr Clinton Boyce, Solicitor at Copeland Borough Council, wrote to me in the matter of my illegal eviction from 74 Main Street, Egremont at the hands of my brother (83A). In his letter Mr Boyce reported to me that “your brother categorically denies that any offence was committed”. Further Mr Boyce reported that “your brother denies he took the keys from you or damaged furniture”, and also that Edwin states “that no assault or threat of assault took place” and “that the allegations are fabricated and exaggerated”. Further, Mr Boyce reported that Edwin claimed he did not recall the date of the day he came round to the flat and that Edwin had said that “he did not realise that you had actually vacated the premises until approximately 30 days had passed”. These of course are lies. Edwin had telephoned me on 3rd August 2009 when I was at Whitrigg House in Wigton two days after my eviction. In any event, in the light of Edwin's statements the Council felt unable to pursue a prosecution. There were no witnesses to the events.
It is at least interesting that Edwin is aware that he needs to tell lies in order to secure his financial gains. He has what he wants - money. He has got Stephen's flat. He has got all mother's possessions in the flat. He has all my possessions, which he has refused to return to me. He has no doubt got a thrill out of destroying these.
In Summary
After my mother's death, whenever I met Edwin and there were no witnesses about, it was always a grueling experience. Even before my mother's death, I was well aware of his enmity towards me which dated back many years. However, I was unprepared for the depth of his personal hatred of me, which seemed to seethe inside him. I asked him directly why he hated me so much. He had a ready response. He said he did not “hate” me, but that he had “no respect” for me. It was only later that I recalled the manner in which he said this. It was obviously a well-rehearsed line. When talking to him, I was hardly able to complete a sentence before he exploded shouting something like “You f***ing shit, you …...... etc.” These outbursts were often ridiculous, and would be laughable were it not for the glowering menace and threat of violence which accompanied them. He would turn crimson, his eyes bulged, he threw his arms about and spittle would form in his mouth. Psychiatrists refer to this type of behaviour as an “anger management” disorder. Edwin has always been known for throwing his weight around. He has always frightened me, and he has always been aware of this and used it. I have no idea why he hates me as he does.
As just one example, just one of these many supposed crimes and sleights for which I was never forgiven, he seemed particularly exercised to an extraordinary extent by the way in which I opened the plastic wrapper on a loaf of bread. Apparently, I open the loaf wrapper in the middle rather than at the end. This incensed him. This had seethed inside him for, what he told me, was over ten years. It was now pay-back time and I was going to be treated with “no sympathy”. More vindictively, on other occasions, he told me I was personally responsible for my mother's death, on account I was “such a little c***, ….. etc.” At the time I was suffering from depression, and Edwin exhibited a mastery in taking advantage of my being mentally unwell.
His method of bargaining was to state what he said should be done, and then force me to agree and say “yes”, whereupon he would make another further demand, and so on. In this style of “negotiation” he considers himself to be an astute businessman with a talent for making deals. In fact, he is simply a bully. There was no way in which I could stand up to him, which he knew. I suspect he treated my mother in the same way, and I suspect some of his deals forced on my mother probably accounts for my mother's fortune which has gone missing. Edwin was obviously sufficiently astute to get my mother's money out of her years before she died.
When people have asked me about his hatred towards me and its origins, I have been truly at a loss to think of an explanation of it. However, when pressed, I would date the time when his hatred became uncontrolled to about the time that the house at Craig Drive was bought in 2000.
In Summary
In June 2006 my mother died. She died leaving no Will and therefore myself and my brother were her joint heirs. Following her death I had a nervous breakdown, which involved several suicide attempts, and I became ill with clinical depression. Whilst mentally ill and legally incapable I was forced through intimidation by my brother into signing a Contract. I signed the Contract under duress. The Contract was drawn up by my brother's solicitors. I had neither solicitor nor legal advisor. In April 2007 I attended the offices of my brother's solicitors and signed the Contract. I also signed Land Registry transfer documents which were put in front of me. I was mentally ill at the time, and I didn't really understand what was happening. In fact, I informed my brother's solicitor that I had discharged myself from hospital the previous week following an overdose suicide attempt. In the Contract I surrendered title of my half-share of my late mother's maisonette flat in exchange for £10,000 from my brother. The maisonette flat had been valued at £77,000. By rights, my half share in the flat was worth £38,500. As such, my brother took advantage of my mental illness to trick me out of £28,500. The Contract was manifestly one-sided in my brother's favour and transparently unfair. I would not have signed had I been mentally sound. The flat in Egremont had belonged to my youngest brother Stephen, and became the property of my mother as a result of his early death in a car accident. The flat was now Edwin's and Edwin was now to live off it's proceeds. Stephen would have been very sad to see this happen, since he had no liking toward Edwin. When he was small my youngest brother Stephen had been bullied badly by Edwin, before he had got big enough to defend himself from Edwin.
When my youngest brother Stephen died, he left a substantial amount of money in his bank accounts (Stephen had worked many hours of overtime at the Sellafield Nuclear plant), he left a large amount of money resulting from Sellafield's death-in-work employee benefit scheme, and he left his flat at 74 Main Street Egremont with its mortgage fully paid off by the insurance. As a result of Edwin's scheming, trickery and greed all of this was now Edwin's. Therefore, Stephen's death has made Edwin a rich man. This might trouble any normal person, but knowing Edwin as I do, and knowing how greedy he is, I know Edwin won't be bothered in the slightest. For my own part, I am relieved that I have not profited in any way financially, or otherwise, from Stephen's death. When Stephen was young, he and I were very close and we remained so until I left home at age eighteen to go to university.
Having obtained title to my mother's maisonette flat, my brother then proceeded to appropriate all the rest of my mother's Estate, to which I should have been due one half share, without my consent, by force. This was all her property at 8 Craig Drive in Whitehaven. There was no-one to stop him. I was suffering from clinical depression and effectively incapacitated. My brother is a natural bully with violent tendencies and anger management problems. I remained at the maisonette flat which was now my brother's property. At first I stayed rent free as agreed. I was still mentally ill for all this period of time. Then from January 2009 my brother required me to hand over payments of £400 per month in order to remain in the maisonette flat. I was ill and I had no-where else to go. By July 2009 I had handed over to my brother in total £2,390, at which point I ran out of money. On the weekend of 1st August 2009 my brother called round at the flat without warning and he illegally evicted me, making me street homeless. He took all my mother's possessions at the flat. I was forced to leave with "only the shirt on my back" and he then disposed of all my possessions, which I have not seen since.
In all this, my brother has acquired for himself the whole of my mother's fortune. I was still recovering from my descent into mental illness, and now homeless, utterly penniless and again close to suicide. My brother had taken all my possessions. I wandered the country and was of no fixed abode. The injustices done to me by my brother were done whilst I was mentally ill and legally incapable and without support, help or advice.
On 18 December 2009 the house at 8 Craig Drive was sold for £145,000 and Edwin moved into 74 Main Street in Egremont. My brother is now a very rich man. I have been left with nothing.
All of this is a true account. There are no exaggerations or half-truths. This is what has happened to me.
The facts set out in the statement are within my own knowledge. Where they are not within my own knowledge I have described the source of the information provided to me which I believe to be true, and these are explained elsewhere on this site.
Nelson William Sharpe