Two days after his son’s death, Bob Williams made his way to a semi-industrialised street in central Birmingham to start an emotional journey to discover his missing years.
“This is as close as I can get to where he was,” said the 65-year-old retired telecoms engineer, surveying piles of donated food, clothing and bedding at the Birmingham Homeless Outreach (BHO) drop-in centre.
“We did fear this could happen,” he added, quietly. “But we thought he may end up in a hospital somewhere. Not dying on a pavement.”
Last Saturday night, as temperatures plunged to -0.8C, his son Paul Williams, 38, bedded down at his regular spot outside the Wagamama restaurant in the city’s Bullring shopping centre. On Sunday, he failed to wake up. An initial post-mortem has proved inconclusive.
Father and son had not met for 15 years, their relationship having slowly corroded through Paul’s drinking.
Now, disconsolate and dazed, he was meeting Paul’s community, the rough sleepers, volunteers and outreach workers his son interacted with on a daily basis and who, during a difficult life on the streets, offered him sanctuary and camaraderie. “Eye-opening,” he said simply.
Paul was not alone when he died on the pavement under a large vent that streams warm air downward from the restaurant, making it a desirable spot for street sleepers. Sleeping next to him was Alan McTaggart, 65, a former factory worker, who found himself on the streets three years ago when the death of his partner triggered depression and lost him his home.
Alan and Paul had become a team and this had been their spot for three months. “Paul suffered with epilepsy. He had fits and I knew how to deal with them,” McTaggart explained . “I had such a lot of good laughs with him. If someone had given us a £20 note, you know, Paul will get up and do a little jig. Yes, good laughs,” he recalled.
Paul offered the older man some physical protection. “He could handle himself,” McTaggart chuckled, recalling how his friend once “saw off five skinheads” who had thrown a bottle of wine which smashed above their heads. “We’d learned to sleep with one eye open, you know”.
If Paul got a place to stay, he would not take it if it meant leaving McTaggart on the streets alone. “And vice versa,” said McTaggart.
On the Tuesday before his death, Paul had been found a room through Rik James, the founder of BHO, who contacted support officers at Provident Housing. He had been given a duvet, a pillow and a box of toiletries. Provident Housing was trying to organise a bank account so that he could receive benefits.
On the Thursday, support officer Craig Parkin noticed Paul’s room emptied of his few possessions and his duvet. He asked if he still wanted the room. “Paul said ‘Yes, yes’. He got quite emotional,” said Parkin.
But Paul did not return to it. “He just wouldn’t leave Alan alone on the streets,” said James, “and I feared for them both.”
Paul’s family knew he sometimes begged on the streets. His brother, David, 43, who lives in the city, saw him sporadically. His father, who lives in Solihull, had looked for him. “But I just didn’t know where to look. I’d see other homeless [people], but never my son,” he said.
Paul and David, a coach driver trainer, grew up in the Warstock-Maypole area of the city. At Baverstock School, Paul wasn’t academic, but excelled at sport and loved art. “His reports were very good. All the teachers liked him. He was funny, everybody liked him. If anybody asked him to do anything he would go out and do it. He put himself out. He was very social,” said his father.
They had shared a love of rugby and he played prop for an under-16s team. “Every Sunday I used to go watch him at the Old Yardleians.”
Paul’s parents divorced when he was in his early teens and he initially stayed with his father. On leaving school he worked in local factories. After a couple of years, he “fell in with a bad crowd,” his father said, adding that drinking became a problem and led to his slide on to the street.
He had rented flats, even putting up his brother at one time until David married. But he lost them through rent arrears. He sold everything his family gave him to buy alcohol, said his father, who by then lived with a new partner. Relatives had always helped out, but couldn’t give indefinitely.
Paul stayed with his mother for a bit, then sofa-surfed with relatives. Doctors warned him that drinking could kill him and his grandfather sought out counselling for him. Though Paul would do “anything for anyone,” the one person he seemed unable to help was himself.
Around 15 years ago, Paul moved to Bolton unexpectedly. His father visited, arriving to find him “absolutely drunk at 9am”. It was the last time he saw Paul, who then moved again but left no contact details. Last year, a month before Christmas, Paul rang him out of the blue but his father said conversation was impossible as he was drunk. Paul never rang back.
In those missing years, Paul lived on and off the streets. For around five years he lived with James, who said he weened him off alcohol and found him work helping distribute food and clothing. Three years ago he disappeared to Kettering with a family of Irish travellers, and laboured for them. He returned 18 months ago, back on the drink and living on the streets. “I was disappointed,” said James. “I never told him, but I was.”
Paul’s brother David first saw him on the streets around five years ago at the German Christmas market in Birmingham. “Somebody called me and I turned around, and it took me a good few seconds to realise that was my brother. That was harsh. I think we talked about how cold it was outside. It was heartbreaking,” he said.
He had seen him sporadically since. Though they talked, the conversations were not deep. “I never sat down with him and asked ‘why do you think you are in this situation’. Ever. Because it just didn’t feel appropriate.” He thinks his brother was just accepting of his situation, perhaps got used to it, and found a place where he fitted into the homeless community.
“He was ace. He was a caring, helpful protective person. Nothing was too much trouble for him and he would never see anybody go without. I think that was probably his downfall,” his brother said.
“I last saw him two weeks before he died, sat outside the place where he was found. He was with one of his friends, sat with a smile on his face. He looked as happy as he could be, I suppose, in the circumstances.”
Juliette Farrell, parish administrator at St Martin in the Bull Ring church, near Wagamama, banters daily with homeless people in the city centre, while bringing them hot drinks and donated snacks.
A few weeks before his death, Paul had looked quite unwell, she said. “I said to him ‘You’ve got to get yourself sorted out. Alan looks well, but you look terrible”. Paul had agreed with her and it looked like he then found a place to go, she said.
On the Thursday there were four of them “all huddled underneath Wagamama”. She was worried as “it was bitter”. She dived into a nearby discount store and bought six pairs of gloves, warning them to call an ambulance if anyone was suffering.
But she thought Paul looked a lot better. The men were drinking cider and were upbeat. She heard of his death on Monday. “I went home on autopilot. I was really upset. But I have had to toughen up,” she said.
“Dreads, Damien, Gus, David. Now Paul …” She tallies up on five fingers those she has known from the Bullring who have died in the last year or two. “My mum says I’m in the death business, because all these people I’m bonding with, they keep dying because they are not getting the help.”
Many have addiction issues. Mamba – formerly a legal high – “is a really big problem,” she said.
There are many facilities and services for the homeless in Birmingham which, according to the city council’s latest statistics, saw the number of rough sleepers rise from eight in 2012 to 55 in 2016.
In addition, there are 2,000 homeless people in emergency and temporary housing in the city. Nobody has to sleep rough in Birmingham, the West Midlands Conservative mayor, Andy Street, said this week. But volunteers and outreach workers believe the figure is far higher. It is difficult to be accurate. People drift off and on the streets all the time.
For three days after learning of Paul’s death, his family were in a hellish limbo. Though he had been named by those on the street, no family member was permitted to see him to formally identify him until Wednesday and a photograph published in the local paper – they do not know where it was sourced – was not Paul.
It compounded their grief and, cruelly, initially allowed them to hope that the dead man was not Paul. Names and identities so easily get lost and confused on the street.
Paul’s father now hopes his son’s story will highlight the issue of homelessness. In particular he feels strongly people should not give money to those begging, which funds addiction, but find other ways of helping, thus breaking a cycle that keeps people on the street. “There are thousands of Pauls,” he said.
His funeral will be held at midday on 10 January at the Robin Hood cemetery in Hall Green. All his friends are welcome. “This was Paul’s life,” his father said.
“He really was a good lad. He was a happy go lucky lad. He would do anything to help anybody. He’d give anybody his last pound. If he had money himself, he’d give it to another homeless person. He had a good heart.”
