Shiptonthorpe has ben plagued by a 'poison letters' campaign. Photo / Facebook
Shiptonthorpe has ben plagued by a 'poison letters' campaign. Photo / Facebook
Residents of Shiptonthorpe are receiving disturbing poison pen letters, including threats and insults.
Eight of nine new parish councillors were elected in May 2023, sparking local tensions.
The police have opened a case, but struggle to identify the letter sender.
Underneath the blank grey sky of a damp, rainy afternoon in September, the small village of Shiptonthorpe in the East Riding of Yorkshire is quietly going about its business. In the village hall, a group of mature ladies are setting up for a watercolour class. There’s the odd dog walker,and a couple of retirees are tending to their gardens during a gap in the rain – gardens which, like the rest of the village, are neat, tidy and unassuming. A Yorkshire flag flutters bravely in the breeze. All seems peaceful, quiet, orderly and very English.
But a week ago, Shiptonthorpe was rocked by the latest arrival in a long series of missives sent to a small group of people who live in or are closely connected with the village. This one, typed on plain white paper and delivered by post, referred to the recipient as a “witch” and offered up hopes and prayers for rain and “lots of it, so your house can be flooded again and again … so you are washed away, never to be seen again”. Previous letters sent to the same resident referred to her as an “ugly fat old cow who nobody likes most find you revolting [sic] ... everyone agrees you should rot in hell … hope cancer finds you soon”. In a sickening twist to the tale, the recipient, who has received many such letters over the past two years, is now suffering with cancer.
One of the letters sent to a resident in Shiptonthorpe. Photo / Supplied
Transcript of a poison pen sent to Leo Hammond, the Conservative councillor for the Wolds Weighton ward. Photo / Supplied
‘It’s vindictive’
It’s all a little reminiscent of Wicked Little Letters, a film based on the real-life story of the mysterious and anonymous vile letters sent to residents in Littlehampton in the 1920s. Or, as one local councillor put it to me, possibly a little too jovially: “It’s like a real life Bridgerton.” This Lady Whistledown, however, is seriously vindictive, weirdly obsessed with sexual shenanigans and has been causing havoc since 2022.
“I’ve had four [letters]” one resident who wishes to remain anonymous told me. “Really awful ones.” The first came in November 2022, when this person had been trying to run as a local ward councillor. “This letter, the first one I received, was so vile – it had words in it that I won’t even speak,” she tells me. “Basically it was telling me that I would not be able to get anywhere in politics unless I was going to do naughty things with men. It referred to me as a cow that should be put out to pasture.” She has had three more since then; one accusing her of embezzling parish funds, a letter that arrived in April and the worst, a revolting Christmas card declaring that “this card has your name all over it!” printed over and over with the word c***. Her partner has received a letter too, she says, warning him to watch out for her and her wicked ways: “Apparently I’ve been having multiple affairs all over the place.
“It’s been an absolute nightmare,” she tells me. “I have nightmares about all of it and wake up crying. I just want it to end. I don’t understand where this hatred has come from.”
From the outside, certainly, it’s hard to imagine a more innocuous-looking place than the neat and tidy Shiptonthorpe. The verges are well tended, the hedges neatly trimmed and the noticeboard outside the village hall is stuffed with information about local activities: a forthcoming quiz night with a light supper; a Shirley Bassey impersonator coming to perform; the village am dram society’s performance of The Vicar of Dibley. Residents have already been encouraged to deck their houses with Christmas lights come December and look forward to the panto – Alice in Wonderland – in January.
Despite outward appearances, however, there is also an air of unease about the place. Curtains are firmly drawn and people do not stop to chat or say hello. There are a surprising number of For Sale signs in front gardens. And the locals I do see are reluctant to talk about what has been happening. One elderly lady sucks her teeth and tells me she has no comment when I ask her about it, except to say: “It’s very upsetting and not something that should be happening in this village.” Her husband scurries off the moment I come near.
Dig a little deeper, meanwhile, and what emerges is a story of internecine warfare that anyone familiar with village life will recognise – one that revolves around the parish council.
Transcript of one of the letters sent to Leo Hammond, the Conservative councillor for the Wolds Weighton ward. Photo / Supplied
In May 2023, eight of the nine parish councillors voted in were new faces, after an election in which 18 people, including all of the former council members, stood for office – a surprisingly large number in a village of 520.
“It was time for a change,” Victor Lambert, the new chairman of the parish council and a resident of Shiptonthorpe for 26 years, tells me. “The people who had been on the council had been there for 10 to 11 years. We didn’t think they were doing anything dramatically good for the village, so it was time for some new ideas.”
Lambert, who says he too has received a poison pen letter (“along the lines of ‘I hope you die’”), is at pains to tell me that he and his fellow new councillors were voted in with a record turnout of 56% – “nearly unheard of in parish elections. We were democratically elected.
“For some reason, the author’s got some kind of obsession with my sexuality, claiming that I’m a closet homosexual, which my girlfriend and I find quite funny.” One letter was signed by Robert Ducker, the previous chairman of the parish council, although: “Robert assures me it was not sent by him.”
Everyone I speak to has their theory about who might be behind the missives. Hammond believes there are two authors at play. He believes the one writing to him is doing it for political purposes “and is quite bitter about the fact that we won in the elections last year”. He says he sees similarities in the letters and emails received from one former East Riding councillor who lost his seat in last year’s May elections. But he thinks whoever is sending the truly vile letters to villagers is someone else.
Of the parish councillors themselves, the two camps again divide, each suspecting the other side of nefarious play. But the general consensus across all sides is that whoever is sending the letters has to be local.
“It can’t be someone new to the village,” says Becky Oxley, who lives just outside Shiptonthorpe but has popped in to let her friend’s dog out for a run. “Otherwise how would they know all these people?”
This is not, surprisingly, the first time Shiptonthorpe has been subject to such a brouhaha. “Poison pen letters have gone round before over the last 20 years,” Hammond tells me. “But this time it’s much more intense and on a much wider scale.”
The police have been informed, and have opened a case – but say they can do very little to apprehend the perpetrator. Nobody even knows where the letters are being sent from: in 2023, Royal Mail stopped including the regional sorting office on franked mail.
The overriding sense is of suspicion, misery and, above all, deep sadness that a small community has ended up like this.
“We all know each other,” says one person. “You wonder who it is. It’s really unsettling.” Shiptonthorpe is, says Hammond, “one of the warmest, most united communities in my ward. It’s a really nice place to live, with really friendly people.”
Right now, however, it feels far from friendly. Even the village Facebook page has been made private, with all posts and comments now moderated and approved by an admin team “to make sure there’s no more nonsense”.
Until then, everyone is hoping that if the letters don’t stop, the perpetrator will at some point, slip up. Which will, of course, cause even more of a hoo ha. For anyone who thought village life was sleepy, the goings-on in Shiptonthorpe prove that to be far from the case.
