Tag Archives: Controlling Behaviour

An anonymous letter written by Jim Perrin

It was not long after our sister’s death.  She had died while still young and her children had to adjust to their lives without her constant and loving guidance.  Of course our family and all those who could help gave their full support, and it was during this period of deep mourning that one of Jac’s sons telephoned his ‘Welsh’ aunt.

Her nephew had just opened a letter, sent by their landlord, which he read to her over the ‘phone. In this letter details were given of a ‘letter of complaint’ which they had received and they ended by saying that ‘As explained, no action is to be taken — there has not been a complaint for fifteen years, so I doubt there will be more!’  (Do note the landlord’s emphasis…)

This troubling letter concerned Jac’s children: sent anonymously in July of that year, less than eight weeks after her death, the clear intention of the writer was to do them harm.  Containing vehemently expressed distortions of the truth as well as actual lies it was a work of the most distilled malice. Continue reading →

Jim Perrin accused Jac’s sisters of ‘Pillaging’

One has only to read so far as page 6 of West to come upon these virulent words. We quote them in full for those who have not read Jim Perrin’s book:

There was nothing to detain me in the caravan by the stream where she and I had mostly lived for the last eighteen months.* To continue there was clearly going to become increasingly difficult and inconvenient as well as painful, for pathological savagery circles after a death, breeding in families, seeking a focus and seeking a target, the guilt of those who neglected and exploited and abused fixing invariably post mortem on those who cared for and provided.

Autonomous human love is always a threat to those whose claims on affection are based not on right behaviour but through propinquity. In the aftermath of a death, the close and caring bereaved are often made homeless, their joint belongings pillaged, whilst the erstwhile-negligent blood-tied ones are emotionally and materialistically merciless in their reappropriations of the deceased. Continue reading →

Jim Perrin burns Jac’s family possessions

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When our sister returned to Wales from her Yorkshire visit she found that one of her cats had disappeared — afterwards it was thought by the family that a fox had taken her, when Jim Perrin described to us the dreadful sounds he had heard some nights before. (As of a cat fight, he said.) This would seem to be confirmed when he later wrote in West of how each evening he fed scraps from his caravan to a fox he had encouraged. Complete madness as Jac’s household had seven cats; eight, including his own — and with a tragic outcome. It is well known that a cat’s most lethal enemy is a fox; a surprising lacuna in Jim Perrin’s self-vaunted knowledge of nature…

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While Jac had been away Jim Perrin had made an enormous bonfire, the ashes of which were over three yards in diameter. We will never know with certainty all that he consigned to the flames but the burnt remnants of a carved table leg were evident — this from an antique mahogany pedestal table — and a fine and elaborate Victorian headboard was also missing: they had belonged to our mother and Jac had brought them down to Wales.

As well as these pieces there had been in Jac’s house an old upholstered rocking chair which was a great favourite and much loved by her sons. Where was this chair?

At first when they asked Jim Perrin about it he feigned surprise, equivocated and denied any knowledge of its whereabouts. However, when they persisted he put forward spurious suggestions that ‘it might have been given away’ — or ‘be in one of the barns’ — ‘almost certainly’ the latter he then said with real conviction, and to back this up made great show of going into the main barn to search for it: and yet despite his best efforts he failed to produce the chair…  Continue reading →