The Death of Tony Hargreaves

It was with great regret that I learned yesterday of the death of Tony Hargreaves. His body was recovered from the River Cam, in Cambridge on Monday evening.
He was one of Cambridge's less fortunate citizens and had lived for several years in homeless hostels in the city. Lyn Watson, manager of the Willow Walk Hostel described him as a very nice and "extremely private man."
To many in the city, however, both residents and tourists alike, he was merely another "down and out" or even worse, simply invisible. I was certainly shocked by the abusive behaviour and comments I witnessed directed at him on occasions . To such insult - hurling perpetrators he was an easy target, beneath their contempt and merely another piece of garbage littering the street.

But as the Cambridge Evening News pointed out this week, he once had a life just as valuable and worthy as the rest of us, serving in the Parachute Regiment for six years. A far cry from the bedraggled tramp most shunned or gave a wide berth to. Who knows what went wrong, when, and why, but his death is a salutary reminder both of our mortality and of the precariousness of our own lives. There but for the grace of God or Fortune go we.

Earlier this year, I did a series of black and white chalk drawings of Tony. One of these is to be used as the poster for the Cambridge Drawing Society's poster for their Autumn exhibition at the Leys School.