Sign up for our Exeter newsletter and you'll never miss a big story again Keep me updated Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

The family of a Tiverton pensioner who was found in a fly-infested house will never know how he died.

A welfare check was carried out at the home of 73-year-old Anthony Caddy on June 10 after a woman delivering magazines saw a large number of flies covering the window of terraced house in Tiverton town centre.

Police found Mr Caddy lying on the floor of his bathroom, partially clothed.

An inquest heard he drew out his pension every Tuesday, and a bank statement revealed the last time he did so was on April 23 - almost two months before his body was discovered.

Mr Caddy, who was born in Chard, was a retired plasterer. No evidence was heard of his previous medical history, but police told how they had opened a letter from the NHS among a stack of leaflets which had been found on his doormat when they entered his home in Bampton Street and found him dead.

A post mortem examination confirmed the cause of death was unascertained.

The report said that due to how ‘very severely’ decomposed his body was it was impossible to give a cause of death, but there was no evidence of apparent trauma.

Coroner Lydia Brown told his son and daughter, who attended the inquest, it was not possible to say when he had died, but they told how they believed it had been between 20 to 50 days before he was found.

Recording an open verdict, Mrs Brown said: “He was clearly overwhelmed suddenly and there is no evidence he tried to seek help. It is not known if he had any medical history that led up to this. There was no identifiable trauma and there is no suggestion he tried to harm himself.

“The only proper conclusion in circumstances such as this is to acknowledge these matters cannot be known.”

She added: “We cannot be accurate of the date he died. There are so many unknowns. I can’t be certain.”

Following his death, his daughter, April Hitchcott, told the BBC: “I was surprised that nobody noticed, you can't tell me you can't see flies flying around.

“If I had seen that I would have said there was something dead in there. How were people so blind?”

She added: “He kept himself to himself so we we're not surprised he died alone.

“But it's frustrating because we would rather have found him because he was our dad.

“He was a serious man, very stubborn. But he would sing all the time and whistle while he was walking around, clicking his fingers."

Ms Hitchcott received a birthday card from her father, but her daughter didn’t, despite her birthday only being two weeks after, the BBC reported.

According to his children, he had lived in Tiverton since he was eight years old and was cared for by a foster family. Mr Caddy lived alone in the house he had rented for 18 years.

Mr Caddy was described as being very fit and had ‘no major illnesses’.