Keeping Up Appearances

It is a source of great shame that Sheila Caffell suffered to the extent she did with mental illness and how, on the whole, the system failed her. You’d like to think in this day and age that the advances made in this area would mean she’d be better supported but in saying that all I actually mean is that we understand a little better.


Away from almost everything else we have to keep in mind that we’re talking about the mid 1980s when understanding was comparatively close to non-existent and acceptance was even less. Within that, we can see just why Jeremy and Sheila’s parents did all they could to try and keep it in house.  A family’s business is its business, after all, and within an extremely small community in which everyone’s affairs were the subject of the idle chit-chat, you would be livid at the idea of your daughter’s struggle with schizophrenia being reduced to the “Ooooh did you hear” of the day.

As a race and as a country we are, even in 2013, embarrassed and scornful of things we don’t understand. If it’s beyond your comprehension, just take the piss out of it – that’s the British way. And unfortunately that was the way in 1985, too. Jeremy himself detailed to me in some pain about the fact that his family were at times seen as the funny farm – so to speak – of their local community; those loopy Bambers and their crazy daughter. That’s just how things were.

Out of sheer embarrassment, that is unfortunately why back at Jeremy’s trial, those who stood to benefit from his conviction – in whatever manner – helped paint the picture that Sheila’s mood was of calmness and sound mind in the hours and on the days surrounding the murders. Why, outside of their own little community bubble would they want to share what they saw as the shame of having someone 'like that' living among them? For a lot of them it was all about keeping up appearances - to not lose face, and out of selfishness and greed for some of them too.

The other theory they asked us to subscribe to was that Sheila just didn’t have it in her to harm her children. “Sure,” they say [I paraphrase] “she may be crazy but she loved her children and would never hurt them.” Of course – in Sheila’s lucid and most clear mind, she wouldn’t – what mother would? The fact is that at times she was not of sound mind, and on occasion she would harm them.

Suzette Ford statement.
View full version here.

Check out this statement from Suzette Ford, a former partner of Jeremy’s. It details the “very harsh treatment” of the two young boys, Nicholas and Daniel, by Sheila. Namely punching them in the face. Are those the actions of a mother who didn't have it in her to harm her children? You might think that, for some bizarre reason, Ford may have reason recount such a tale in defence of Jeremy – but the account of witnessing of the harm didn’t come from her – it was from Sheila’s ex-boyfriend, who would know more of the matters than anyone one of us could wish to. In other accounts he details how he became frightened for his own safety in being present during one of Sheila’s schizophrenic episodes – does this sound like a woman of sound mind?

I say all of this not to persecute her. Her own extended relatives and a wider community did enough of that when she was alive. It isn’t about apportioning blame and pointing the finger – but it is about establishing fact, and the fact is that contrary to the popular belief of 1985, Sheila was capable of harming her children and, most tragically, went on to do so in the most devastating way imaginable.