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Miriam Baldock - 'Everyone's Mum' |
'SHE WAS WHOLE LIFE'
Family speak of their shock at savage murder of mother, 61
FAMILY, friends and neighbours have spoken of their shock and grief after a woman regarded as ‘everyone’s mum’ for her generosity to those in need was killed and her husband seriously wounded in a savage attack in their Camden Town home.
Neighbours in the Maiden Lane estate found Miriam Baldock, 61, dead in her home at 5.35am on Saturday after her husband Maurice, 60, gravely injured, had managed to call for an ambulance.
The couple had both been stabbed.
“She was just my whole world, she was my whole life – my mum, my sister, my best friend,” said Miriam’s daughter Stephanie Barrow, 35, as she and her brother Stephen, 40, paid tribute to the strength of character of a generous, loving mother whose home was a byword for hospitality to those in trouble or despair.
“The house was an open house – she was a mum to everyone.
“The door was never locked, and everyone knew her – everyone knew her name,” said Stephen Barrow.
“Fostering was never her job – she just took people in when they needed somewhere – took them in until they were better or they were straight. She had cancer three times and fought it off three times. She was hard and she never let anything faze her, she was a fighter and she never took a break. Nothing – not even cancer – stopped her from what she wanted to do. This was no kind of death for her.”
Yesterday, a stream of visitors left condolences and flowers for a couple described by detectives investigating the case as “the most popular people in this whole estate”.
“Even people who had only spoken to her will have felt that they had known her for years,” said Stephanie, whose own home in Linkwood Walk is yards from her parents’.
“The phone has not stopped. Everyone knew her. She ran the Maiden Lane community centre when we were kids. She started it with a box of sweets from her own money, and she ended with a disco, a tuckshop and a youth club every Friday night. She was there for anyone she could help – keeping kids off the streets or keeping them on the right track. And she was there for her grandchildren, Terry, Carla and Harry.”
Miriam’s brother, Cliff Watson, 54, remembered how she had loved horses and Airedale terriers in her Barnet childhood before training in corsetry at Tottenham Tech and taking her first job – in a “life full of hard work” at a hosiers.
He said: “Miriam was my sister but she was my mum and all – she was everything. She gave a bit of herself to everyone.”
Fire officers also paid their respects yesterday, recalling Miriam’s 20 years’ work at Kentish Town fire station, a job she had heard about from the firemen regulars while working at the Tally Ho pub in Fortess Road when she moved with her children to Dunollie Road, Kentish Town in 1978. She moved to the Maiden Lane estate with retired construction manager Maurice, her second husband, in 1982.
The family also saluted his bravery and will as they prepared to collect him from UCL hospital last night, where they had mounted a vigil during his five days of treatment for four stab wounds. “Dad was a second away from death,” said Stephanie. “He has always been a fighter too. Once he is home we will be able to come together as a family and grieve.”
• STUART Forsyth, 40, of no fixed abode, appeared at West London Magistrates’ Court yesterday (Wednesday) charged with the murder and attempted murder of Mr and Mrs Baldock.
Wearing a white long-sleeved t-shirt and speaking only to confirm his name and date of birth, Forsyth was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey in November. He was arrested after handing himself in to a police officer outside a police station in Bodmin, Cornwall, on Monday morning. |
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