The photographs showed a pretty young woman with red hair, in one dressed up as if going to a fancy dress party, in the other, donned in hospital gown, identity bracelet on wrist, bending over a cot holding a baby's finger, but looking into the camera.She had apparently lived outside the supermarket, homeless.
A gofundme page was duly set up to raise money for the funeral.
While haunted by this story, I was also puzzled as I walk past the supermarket at least once a day, sometimes more, and never once had I seen this girl, even sitting outside, let alone living. And she was certainly striking enough to make an impression if I had. Nor could I imagine such a girl would have been short of offers of help.
Moreover it had been more than a year since anyone had attempted to sleep outside the supermarket on a regular basis, a young man who had a habit of stuffing the local phone box full of his belongings overnight.
I asked the staff about her. She had sometimes begged outside the supermarket they said, but had never lived on the street outside, and to the best of their knowledge, had not died there either. One was quite distressed that anyone should think they had allowed a helpless young woman to die on the streets outside their shop and was at pains to point out that outreach workers visited the area daily.
Fast forward four months and the coroner's report has just appeared in the local paper.
The young woman *Yvonne turned out to be a 24 year old with a flat in Hove and a young son, although she had apparently known instances of homelessness in her life. She and her partner had taken drugs together one night and he had woken up to find her dead in bed the following morning.
My sympathy immediately evaporated.
Who decided to set up a tribute to her outside my local supermarket and claim she was street homeless, rather than an addict with a home begging for drugs money?
Was her death politicised by putting tributes outside the supermarket, despite the fact that her death had had nothing to do with the supermarket? Apparently cardboard gravestones are now appearing in street locations around Bristol, as if every death is attributable to society's failings, rather than poor life choices (and according to Shelter, two thirds of homeless are homeless owing to addiction issues).
Did those who gave *Yvonne money realise they actually financed her to commit passive suicide?
She had died by her own hand, albeit presumably accidentally, in her own flat leaving a motherless baby behind. And nowadays we are apparently supposed to feel sympathy for 'victims' like this.
Granted, some individuals have difficult and even terrible starts in life (and I speak as one of the former). But surely, if they then bring a baby into the world, they either give it up for adoption to someone who can look after it or vow the child will have a completely different childhood and life to themselves? What happened to a child as a wake up call and motivator to turn one's life around? What happened to a child as a serious responsibility?
I began to mull on the curious modern cult of victimhood we are seemingly supposed to accept and subscribe to, and in many cases treat as lifelong, rather than a temporary state.
Why too are we supposed to accept this hideous drug culture sprouting up all around us without question as the new normal? How can drugs ever be regarded as 'recreational' when they can just as easily kill or maim as offer a few hours escapism?
Recently I read the autobiography of a forensic pathologist. Tellingly, when he embarked on his career in the early 1980s, he came across his first cocaine overdose death in 1985, some four years after he had qualified and he was very surprised by it. Nowadays it is not unusual for him to come across more than one in a day's work, just from cocaine. And not just young people either, He is increasingly finding middle aged cases on his slab. According to him there has been a seismic shift in the number of unnatural deaths owing to substance abuse over the last few years.
I wonder what Charles Dickens would make of street life today. What novels would he pen? Where would his sympathies lie? Somehow I don't think he would disagree that even poor people are capable of self respect and taking some degree of responsibility for their life choices. Moreover, local hostel places often go unused by those who seem to prefer the streets and are allowed to remain on the streets, despite the law.
Notwithstanding, I regularly support homeless charities, particularly Emmaus, who do an amazing job of full support and rehabilitation (for those who commit to their programme) but I question the efficacy of many other approaches and ideologies. For example every time a local premises doorway or public area is secured from rough sleepers overnight, there are some who deem this 'unacceptable' or 'an attack on the homeless' as if it is perfectly acceptable to sleep in shop doorways or on beaches, open to attack and the elements, rather than in hostels. We also had a local MP who thought 'shooting galleries' were a good idea to facilitate the illegal activity of drug taking! The only people that might help would be park users who don't want to keep finding syringes everywhere, not the homeless.
*Note: I have chosen not to use a photo of the real life street tribute, but this image seemed just as apt,
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