How can a death go unnoticed in modern society?
Best of Today
BBC
4.0 • 837 Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sheila Seleoane was found in her Peckham flat in February 2022 and had to be identified by dental records.
Her neighbours initially made complains to their housing association, Peabody, about a foul stench and maggots in 2019 – but the housing association only made one “proactive attempt” to contact the tenant and cut off her gas.
Miss Seleoane’s last known contact was with her GP in August 2019, and when her body was found, the cause of her death was unascertained due to the advanced state of composition of her body.
But what was she like and who was she? In the second in a series of three, Harry Farley talks to Today’s Justin Webb about loneliness and isolation while living in an urban area.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:04.8 | Hello and welcome to the best of today with me, Justin Webb. |
| 0:07.4 | This week we are featuring a series of reports exploring the story of Sheila Selione. |
| 0:12.9 | She was a 58-year-old medical secretary who died alone in her flat in August 2019. |
| 0:19.2 | Her body wasn't discovered until two and a half years later, February |
| 0:23.2 | 2020. Harry Farley is with us. Well, Justin, we heard yesterday about the organizational |
| 0:29.3 | responsibility in this story and the multiple failures that combined to mean that Sheila lay |
| 0:35.5 | undiscovered for so long. But at the heart of this is a story of deep isolation. And we're now more conscious of loneliness among the elderly and more recently perhaps of loneliness among the young. But as you said, what struck me about this story was that Sheila was 58 years old of working age, and I wanted to find out what I could |
| 0:55.3 | about what she was like and who she was. |
| 1:04.3 | I'm watching a video of Sheila Selioni's South African funeral. A simple wooden coffin is carried |
| 1:10.8 | by four men into a large white marquee. |
| 1:16.0 | It's laid on an altar and a large bouquet of flowers is placed on top of the coffin as a service begins. |
| 1:25.4 | After she was discovered, Sheila's remains were flown to the village her mother had left for the UK in 1954. |
| 1:32.3 | No one in this video knew Sheila, but dozens of people, dressed in either Mourner's Black or Methodist Red, |
| 1:40.3 | are gathered around her coffin, swaying as they sing. |
| 1:52.0 | Her niece Itumeleng organized that ceremony. |
| 1:55.6 | It was very strange. |
| 1:57.9 | Even the priest, he didn't know what to say. Even us, we didn't have much to say because |
| 2:05.9 | we've never met her. We don't know what kind of person she was. She had no child. She had no |
| 2:13.4 | friends. We don't even know what her hobbies were. |
| 2:24.4 | I'm standing in the South London block outside the flat where Sheila died. |
| 2:28.8 | Listening to the sounds, she would have heard day in, day out. |
... |
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