Hoarder died in garbage labyrinth
Gordon Stewart, 74, was found dead in his Buckinghamshire, England home inside a maze of tunnels he had burrowed through the garbage that packed his property. The hoarder apparently died of dehydration. (For a fascinating book about the world's most famous hoarders, the Collyer brothers, I highly recommend Franz Lidz's Ghosty Men.) From The Telegraph:
The Thames Valley Police Specialist Search and Recovery team, who usually deals with underwater rescues or explorations of contaminated sites, used their cutting-edge equipment to navigate their way through the rubbish, locating his body in one the tunnels. The highly-trained team carry breathing apparatus, gas detectors, analysers and remote cameras, and wear protective clothing...."Pensioner 'entomed in labyrinth of tunnels carved into rubbish'" (Thanks, Robert Pescovitz!)
One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: "He was slightly eccentric, but very clever. He was just a collector. He came home with a load of cardboard boxes and lived in his own world."
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That's genuinely sad. Did he just get lost, or was he refusing to leave his treasures?
I believe this is known as Diogenes Syndrome. I'm interested that the neighbour asked not to be named - nothing s/he said appears unpleasant; maybe this is just a sensible response when talking to the British press.
Hoarding, that is, not dying in a tunnel.
David, look for Helen Worden Erskine's Out of This World (1953). HWE is the reporter who "discovered" the Collyer brothers. Her book is about the Collyers and other urban recluses.
Wow.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
>_
but but but.....
Wind turbine destroyed after 'octopus UFO' seen in sky!!!!!!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4174333/Wind-turbine-destroyed-after-octopus-UFO-seen-in-sky.html
This is very sad. But I think another angle to look at is how society treats people who want to sell off or get rid of accumulated things.
Between a family crisis in my mid-20s to later on afterwards in my mid-30s I collected stuff I genuinely didn't want/need. Ironic kitsch. Tons of comics. Tons of things that I thought were neat. Nowhere near the point of this case or any hoarding case, but I genuinely felt the urge to "hoard" this stuff. And never really looked at the stuff after I got it. Friends thought it was "cool" but I started to get sick of it. So thanks to eBay, Craiglist and local thrift shops, I started to slowly get rid of this stuff. I figured, "I'll get some money back and have more space for things I really like..."
Here's the deal. Whenever a friend or acquaintance got wind I was selling stuff on eBay, one of two reactions popped up. One, that I was selling stuff and "raking it in" and that's the only reason I'm selling stuff. The other was bizarre pity as if it was a bad thing for me to take things and say "You know, I don't need this stuff so I'll sell it so someone else can enjoy it..."
I think it comes down to a fact that beyond capitalism and consumerism, hoarding is a sign of strength. And selling or getting rid of something is a sign of weakness. Heck, look at how oddly people react to co-operative environments or even freecycling events. And somehow Diogenes syndrome is an extreme manifestation of someone wanting to control something and have some "power" in some way.
You know what's great about the digital age? There's no reason to hoard papers, albums or books. Someone somewhere is likely to have it in digital form and it takes up less space or even no space if you read online.
I'm getting long winded, but basically acquiring things is instinctively looked on as good. And divesting things is instinctively looked on as bad. And in a digital age, that shouldn't be an issue.
MICHAEL_LEDDY @4, Thanks! That book sounds right up my alley.
I once did a summer job doing cleanups on fire marshall's orders - property owners would get notifications that they must clean up some fire hazard by a particular date, or the fire marshall would have it done and pass them the bill. This landscaping company got these jobs, and would hire in temp staff to do them.
The back yard was a heap of rubbish almost as high as the house, and the house itself was filled with rubbish in some places to the ceiling, in other places only about 4 feet deep. Toward the centre, it became something like compost, as the kitchen tap had been leaking for years and years in the middle of it all. There were maybe half a dozen frightened sick little kittens hiding in the rubbish. I called the SPCA a day or two later; it turned out that they had to be put down.
I think the couple who lived there had been staying in their car for the past few years, only using the bathroom in the house - there was still a navigable tunnel from the back door to the bathroom.
We were definitely not cutting edge specialists - a couple of gardeners, and a couple of students on summer jobs, wearing oxygen tanks borrowed from the fire department, and coveralls duct-taped at the wrists and ankles.
It was a very strange and sad job.
Note to self - hoard potable water.
What kind of car is that? Any Jalopniks on here who can identify it?
I'm a collector, but of mind.
So maybe now he entered the life where he can use this stuff he collected! Anyway, it’s interesting his smells could escape to alarm the neighbors, something the old trash didn't do.
Anyone else think of the crack fox when they saw the headline?
maybe it's a Morris or a Vauxhall...
hey thanx for octo-UFO link above. Somthing got that turbine, right 'nuff.
I've never heard of Diogenes Syndrome. Seems a funny name for hoarding. Granted, you'd need a pretty powerful lamp to find your way around such messes.
I thought hoarding like this was a manifestation of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.
I have OCD and I can tell you that hoarding doesn't generally happen. I mean, it can mean a few things of note piling up (like my grandmother, who kept a car that didn't work - she had her reasons, a 40's radio that did work, several pieces of furniture that were good quality but missing pieces, and dozens - hundreds, really - of cool records), but someone who is really OCD would also want organization. I'm a bit of a pack rat, but all my useless junk is piled neatly on shelves in my closets and bookcases. Granted, hoarders like this guy probably did keep all his stuff organized in his own little way, I can't imagine someone who is truly OCD would want to do something that bad.
@#10 POSTED BY DRAGONFROG;
All I can think of after that description is: The dream of home ownership!
Yeeesh....
Patrick Dodds @ 2 - not giving your name is a sensible response under most circumstances in the UK
Another notorious British hoarder was Mr Trebus, who was featured in a BBC docusoap in the 90s.
Horse Badortie's pad, man.
Difficult to tell what car it is from half a back view but it looks a lot like an Austin A30 or A35.
Note "he used to make wooden parts for Morris cars" maybe that is all the explanation that is needed.
This just happened here, too (crushed by her collapsing hoard):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1109168/Shopaholic-spinster-dead-3ft-unopened-goods.html
Try "My Brother's Keeper" by Marcia Davenport -- an amazing novel in its own right, based on the Collyer brothers story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Brother%27s_Keeper_(novel)