The widow of a post office operator accused of misappropriating funds in the Post Office Horizon scandal has spoken of her anguish that he died before his name could be cleared.
Vivienne Hammond, 88, told the Guardian she was traumatised by discovering what her late husband, Dennis, must have suffered in secret during the last 20 years of his life when she watched ITV’s dramatisation of the scandal. More than 2,500 post office operators were wrongly accused of theft because of a glitch in a new accounting software system. The series, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, has led to new calls for victims to be exonerated.
“Focus has quite rightly been on those who were wrongly convicted or lost their livelihoods, but the hundreds of others who were made to pay back money they never took have also had to live with the pain and humiliation, and haven’t had their voices heard,” Hammond said.
“My husband never spoke to me of what happened. He was diagnosed with cancer a few years later and I’m tortured by the thought that the stress might have contributed to his illness. I can’t find the words to describe how it feels seeing played out on screen the torment he kept from me and knowing that I wasn’t able to support him through it.”
Dennis Hammond had been a village post office operator for 20 years when he was blamed for a cash shortfall of about £3,000 soon after the Horizon system was installed. The money was subsequently deducted from his wages.
“He told me that the auditor, who was usually very friendly, had paid a visit which wasn’t friendly at all and that some money was missing, then he never spoke of it again,” said Hammond. “All these years I assumed that there must have been some mistake that was then put right.
“I was a sub-postmistress myself in a neighbouring village at the time and had complete trust in the Post Office. It wasn’t until 2021, when I read of the fate of other postmasters, that I realised that he must have been a victim of Horizon too. By then he was dead and it was too late to help him.”
Hammond contacted the Horizon shortfall scheme, launched to compensate affected postal operators in 2021, in an attempt to vindicate her husband, and was told she was out of time. The scheme had closed to new applicants six months after opening during the first lockdown in 2020. “We were never informed of a compensation scheme for those who paid what was demanded without being convicted,” she said. “As my husband was dying of cancer in 2020, my attention was elsewhere.”
The day after her plight was highlighted in the Guardian, the Post Office announced that it would consider claims lodged after the deadline and Hammond has since received compensation on her husband’s behalf in return for signing a non-disclosure agreement. “It was about the principle, not the money,” she said. “My husband carried the knowledge that he’d been falsely accused to the grave and I want it acknowledged that he wasn’t dishonest. I also want it acknowledged that hundreds of others who have not been in the media spotlight are not statistics but human beings with their own stories of pain.”
Hammond said she was now wrestling with anger at the Post Office for betraying her trust, as well as guilt that she didn’t realise her husband’s situation.
“My daughters can’t bear to watch the ITV drama because it’s too painful, but I think we owe it to all the victims to see what they’ve suffered,” she said. “I just wish that I had the chance to tell my husband that I now know what he went through, that I’ve now belatedly done everything I can to support him and that his name has been cleared.”
