Vulnerable

Having a good education, coming from an advantaged background, or indeed being a highly respected member of society doesn't protect anybody when they get old. In fact sometimes it is for that very past that people don't like to meddle, and the elderly become more vulnerable.

No I'm not making collections of cheap Asian costume jewelery, nor am I trying to flog it on Ebay... I'm just going to show what happens when you get conned.

I know Irene's family won't mind me telling you about this as if only one person is saved it's worth it.
It started with a woman who corresponded every day of her life. She wrote to friends, MP's, committees arranging meetings, holding accounts and generally was a very busy person.
The day arrived when she was no longer 'needed' as much, so she started answering requests for donations to charity, then the odd Readers Digest letter. By the time her role in the public domain was finished, the scam mail had started and the promises of huge winnings or a free gift in return for the purchase of books, a pot of face cream, a cleaning product or a pair of tights.

When I first met Irene she closed herself into her dining room for hours every day doing her 'correspondence'. I was only going in for a couple of hours a week and didn't think anything of handing her a pile of mail in the morning. As time past her needs were greater and I noticed the pile of daily mail was getting higher. The postman delivered excesses of twenty envelopes a day and packets galore. Irene duly replied to almost all of them. Many of her replies contained cheques not for huge amounts but multiplied by the number that went out I could see that things were getting out of hand.
I can't tell you how many bottles of window and silver cleaner, gadgets, clocks and stationary arrived daily... each order promising a free gift or entry to a competition.

I started removing post when I could, put her on the opt out list for marketing preferences and eventually told her son that many of her cheques would be missing as I wasn't putting them in the post box. Silkies tights and an obscure cosmetic company tried to threaten suing when I refused to let Irene pay for goods that were never ordered but posted just because she was on their mailing list.

As her age advanced Irene needed more care and I called others in to help, ordering everyone to eliminate the junk mail. By the time Irene required 24hour care we had managed to get the post down to a few letters every week. I'd been filtering her post for over ten years!

This image is of a tiny proportion of the free gifts, possibly less than one percent. It is a little of what we removed from her draw when she went into a home which I kept to do something like I am now with this blip. The largest part of what we found went straight where it belongs... in the bin. I hate to think how much never reached that draw. Remember, for each free gift a purchase was required.

A few weeks before Irene was taken into her retirement home, the postman knocked on the door with a big smile on his face. "I had to come" he said, "This is the first time, in over 15 years, I have no mail to deliver!"

Oh and if anyone out there needs a load of crap jewellery for theatre, crafts or otherwise... let me know and I'll post this lot to you. If there are no takers I'll take it to a charity shop.

By the way. Irene was and is no fool. I'm sure she knew what I was doing from the very start. Addictions like these are difficult. She preferred to continue, ignoring what I was doing and never once questioned why an order hadn't arrived. I've always assumed she felt safer knowing there was someone there intervening. We often discussed scams but she still felt obliged to reply.