When Brenda Hardy opens the post at her lovely home at Shiptonthorpe, in Yorkshire’s East Riding, she does it with extraordinary care.
First, she pops on a pair of latex gloves. Then she slices open the envelope with a paper knife. Next, with a pair of tweezers, she extracts the letter and places it in a plastic bag. Finally she calls the police.
‘I can tell the minute I see the letter whether it’s one of them. I can just feel it,’ she says. ‘Hand typed, in an envelope from Tesco, with patterned liner. And always on a Thursday.’
These are not addressed to Brenda, but her husband Victor Lambert, a horticultural engineer and chairman of the parish council.
Shiptonthorpe in East Yorkshire has been hit by an extraordinary poison pen campaign
At least ten residents out of a population of only 503 have received the vile letters
They’ve been arriving for more than two years and each has been deeply unpleasant.
‘The first one was fairly straightforward,’ says Brenda. ‘Things like, “Resign from the council!” and “You’re hated in the village!” – that sort of thing.’
But the seven that followed were increasingly vicious. Everything from ‘I wish you had cancer’, to ‘I’d like to see you under a bus on the A1079’. (The main road outside the village).
Some letters were about Victor, 75, and his parish council work. Some were about other villagers. ‘Really, really nasty things,’ says Brenda. ‘Too nasty to tell you.’
And as anyone following the news will know, Victor was not the only recipient. At least ten locals – mainly parish councillors – in this small village, population 503, have received vile letters in an extraordinary poison pen campaign.
It smacks of Wicked Little Letters, the Olivia Colman film, based on the true story of a poison pen campaign in the town of Littlehampton, West Sussex, in the 1920s.
Katy Wrathall, whose house had once been flooded, received one which read: ‘Hoping and praying for rain lots of it. Climate change and Yorkshire weather will deliver lots of rain so your house can be flooded again and again.
‘Most people in Shiptonthorpe are wanting rain and floods so you are washed away never to be seen again… it is you the witch that the village dislikes… just keep raining.’
A letter sent to another lady reads: ‘You are an ugly old fat cow who nobody likes… most find you revolting. Everyone agrees you should rot in hell.
The Mail’s Jane Fryer in the village where the letter-writing campaign has upset locals
‘You use up oxygen better used by decent people. Kids are frightened when they see you. Hope cancer finds you very soon.’
Awfully, I’m told the recipient is now suffering from cancer.
Leo Hammond, the local ward councillor has received eight letters, in which he has been accused of being an embarrassment, a disgrace, arrogant, divisive and ambitious – all with the theme is that he is secretly gay, something he and his girlfriend find rather surprising.
There are several dozen letters that we know about, but quite possibly many more – vile, vindictive, from someone who clearly knows his or her victims.
Which is perhaps why, for so long – whether through embarrassment, fury or fear, who knows? – the recipients kept them secret. Leaving the other villagers blissfully unaware – walking their dogs, chatting in the street, attending art classes and rehearsing for the Shiptonthorpe community theatre production of The Vicar Of Dibley in the village hall.
But then, last week, the story hit the national – and international – press. When I visited – on a gorgeous sunny Wednesday with the roses and hanging baskets still in bloom – most people were frantically catching up.
‘I can’t believe it’s been going on for so long and we’ve only just heard about it,’ says Beverley, who works in the nearby Langlands Garden Centre. ‘It’s total madness!’
Two retired ladies waiting at the bus stop outside the church – off on a shopping trip – are flabbergasted.
‘This is the loveliest place and there’s so much to do – yoga, walking groups, tai chi,’ says one, with a pristine silver bob and lovely pink lipstick.
‘But now we’ve been on the news in India! And I only heard about it yesterday.’
And she’s right. For sleepy Shiptonthorpe, which dates back to the Domesday Book, does seem rather nice.
Some Shiptonthorpe residents believe the letter campaign is connected to local politics
Pretty houses with names like Mole End and Myrtle Cottage, in Yorkshire stone. Hedges trimmed and strimmed to perfection. Pottery cats and shire horses displayed on windowsills.
And a huge array of events – a Shirley Bassey night, quiz nights, Cilla Black tribute nights, pantomimes – all at the village hall.
Even postman Chris, on his rounds in shorts, is reeling, ‘One of the other postmen told me yesterday. I could have delivered them! That’s a horrible thought, isn’t it? I’d never know.
‘But how could you? It makes you feel bad though. Aren’t people weird?’
The letters vary. Some – usually the really nasty ones – were written on cut-off bits of paper in a computer font that looks like handwriting, with capitals at the start of each hurtful sentence, but no full stops.
Others – mostly directed at parish council business – were in standard bold type.
But the envelopes were all the same. No distinctive postmarks. The addressees carefully typed.
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble – and everybody here, including me, wants to know who. Though, right now, the ‘why’ seems easier.
The general consensus is that it all swirls around local politics. There’s no question there’s been plenty of bad feeling sloshing around lately.
There have been several big rows between outgoing and incoming parish councillors, involving a lease agreement for the village hall – Shiptonthorpe’s community hub – and about a possible building development on the edge of the village.
Last year, the entire council (bar one) was voted out and replaced – with the police called not once but twice on polling day.
Officers were also called to a parish council meeting a while back, when a disagreement with the clerk turned into a right old kerfuffle at the door. And when I dig a bit deeper, it seems there might have been some tension between the village hall and the church, too.
Something to do with the village Christmas tree and lighting ceremony having been moved from the 12th-century church to the village hall. And a precious embroidery that was left in the hall that may, or may not, have been bundled into a bin bag and stuffed into a corner.
Which seems a terrible shame. Not least because, like so many villages – the church and the village hall are, pretty much, the only facilities left for a rural community that would once have had four shops, three pubs and, back in the day, a school and maybe a railway station.
Yet however many petty disagreements, however out of joint people’s noses get, there is no excuse for anything so nasty as this. For writing a letter laced with loathing, printing it off, putting it in an envelope, carefully addressing it, affixing a stamp and then going to the post box.
Brenda has her suspicions.
‘Yes, I have an idea who sent them. Possibly two people who know each other.’
Wisely she won’t give any names, but she thinks one might live outside the village.
What is clear, is how much upset the letters have caused. Some were ripped up in disgust as soon as they were read. Many others handed to the Humberside police, though without much hope.
‘They couldn’t do anything. They’ve got bigger fish to fry. Of course they have,’
says Brenda. But the campaign has taken its toll. Take one lady – who lives outside the village and prefers not to be named. Vile messages started plopping through her letterbox when she stood as a ward councillor.
‘Gosh, she had some horrible letters. Really insulting,’ Brenda tells me. ‘She lived alone. She didn’t know who sent it. I went to see her a while ago and she was in total bits.’
To date, she has received at least four which, among other horrors, accused her of being promiscuous, told her she’d never get anywhere in politics without performing what she describes as ‘unspeakable things’ to men and that she should be ‘turned out on the Beverley Westwood pasture with the rest of the cows’.
If that wasn’t enough, her partner also received a letter, urging him to stop her from ‘roaming’, signed ‘A caring dear friend’.
Katy Wrathall was so angry about her letter, that she posted it on the local Facebook site. ‘For Katy it was so cruel. It’s personal. They know her,’ says Brenda.
Even Victor, whom Brenda says is ‘quite a tough boot’, was affected. ‘It bounced off him a bit – outwardly, in a male way. He’s softer in his old age,’ she says.
At first, Brenda was furious, then she began to worry. To feel sorry for the writer.
‘They must be so damaged. To write these – they must be mentally disturbed to be doing this – have a real problem.’
Maybe it’s a good thing that, after two years, the letters are out in the open. Perhaps the writer – surely someone desperately unhappy to be writing such bile – might pause before they put pen to paper again.
Maybe the community can now rally round and support the recipients. Show them they care. Pull together and stop bickering about Christmas trees and embroideries and endless local political shenanigans.
There are certainly green shoots of hope.
Farmer Richard Waring posted a photo of his new calf on the local Facebook site, to try to cheer everyone up.
Everyone I chat to tells me what a wonderful place it is to live. How no one ever leaves – ‘we tend move up, not out…’ says Richard Waud, 74. That younger families are beginning to move in and every one of the many village events is a sell-out.
Earlier this week, Victor received a different sort of letter.
‘It was from a villager saying how wonderful it was to live in a fabulous village like this, thanking him and saying how he couldn’t understand the letters,’ says Brenda. ‘And it was signed!’
And back in the village hall, the Vicar Of Dibley is completely sold out and talk is turning to the Christmas panto and some very exciting plans for an extension and new occasional bar.
Meanwhile, Chris the postie goes about his job – presumably now, on red alert every Thursday, for anything out of the ordinary.
