A woman is to marry the homeless man she used to watch rifling through a bin for scraps near her secondhand bookshop four decades ago.

Joan Neininger started to leave wrapped sandwiches for Ken Selway in the bins near her shop in Gloucester. Her act of kindness developed into an extraordinary love story and the pair, now in their late 80s and living together at a residential home, are to marry in a register office in the Forest of Dean.

Neininger, a mother and great-grandmother, said: “When I saw him ferreting through the bins outside a fish and chip shop near my bookshop, I never thought for a minute it would end like this.

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“But although he was living on the streets, I knew straight away that Ken was a lovely man with a beautiful soul. The man haunted me like a spectre. The first time I saw him searching for food in a rubbish bin, I silently broke my heart.”

She read about the plight of homeless people in Down and Out in Britain by Jeremy Sandford and began to try to help Selway. He would not take money, but eventually was persuaded to join her and her then husband, Norman, for a meal.

Selway revealed he had been born in London and had been evacuated to Wales where he became a “Bevin Boy”, a young man conscripted to work in the coalmines during the second world war.

When the Welsh man he regarded as a father died, he returned home, but his mother could not cope with him as he had developed mental health problems.

Selway began to sleep in railway stations and shop doorways until he came to Gloucester looking for relatives of his adoptive father and stumbled across a derelict house to sleep in at night. His belongings at the time included a spare set of clean clothes, a radio and a fossil he found while mining that he kept in a hidey-hole behind a brick in a wall.

Over the next few years, Selway drifted in and out of the lives of Neininger and her husband. At one point, Norman issued an ultimatum and his wife moved out into a caravan that Selway would come to stay in though their relationship was, and has remained, celibate.

Selway’s mental health problems also made things difficult.

Neininger said: “People with schizophrenia are imprisoned by the voices. Ken believed everything these voices were telling him so it was very difficult to have a relationship. I did not know anything about it but I soon learned.”

She became a mental health campaigner and published a book about Selway called Portrait of Ken.

The three – husband and wife plus Selway – found a way of getting along. “I married at 16 and Norman was a wonderful man and a lovely husband and father,” said Neininger. “Because there was no sexual jealousy it was fine and Ken and Norman were like brothers. It was like a little paradise – just Ken, Norman and me.”

After Norman died, Selway developed health problems and moved into a home, where he was later joined by Neininger.

She said: “People say I saved Ken. But it was actually Jeremy Sandford’s book that made me look twice at the men sleeping rough and see him as the person he was. The sad thing is that it’s still happening today – in fact it’s getting worse.”

Selway insisted his wife-to-be had saved him. He said: “When I met Joan I was sleeping rough and wanted to kill myself. I probably would not be here now if it wasn’t for her leaving those sandwiches in the bin. She’s a really kind person.”