Concert pianist who lived in a car for 26 years was crushed to death by 9mph lorry
A FORMER concert pianist who lived in a car for 26 years after falling on hard times was killed by a lorry travelling at 9mph, an inquest heard.
Anne Naysmith, 78, who trained at the Royal Academy of Music, was a well-known figure in Chiswick, west London.
She wore plastic bags on her feet and was often seen pushing a trolley containing her belongings along Chiswick High Road.
She was killed when she stepped off a bus and into the path of a lorry on February 10 last year – just yards from a pedestrian crossing, the inquest at West London coroner’s court was told. Miss Naysmith was dressed in black and Polish HGV driver Lukasz Cimoch had ‘little time’ to react, the hearing was told.
She died from severe pelvic and lower limb injuries.
The inquest heard Miss Naysmith was held in ‘great affection’ by locals and 450 people attended her funeral.
Born Anne Smith in 1937, she grew up in Chiswick with her mother and father, an Army officer. After her parents’ divorce, she achieved classical performing diplomas at Trinity College London. She performed at Central London’s Wigmore Hall throughout the 1960s, but by the early 1970s she had run into financial problems, around the same time a romance with a choral singer failed.
Her financial position continued to worsen and she was asked to leave her lodgings in Prebend Gardens, Chiswick.
Believing she had been wronged, she took to sleeping in her car. Her blue Ford Consul was eventually towed away in 2002 and she moved into a makeshift shelter near Stamford Brook Tube station until she was evicted in 2012, and took to sheltering in a nearby doorway.
She roamed London, becoming a regular visitor to the Barbican music library, and was sometimes found chatting knowledgeably to crowds outside the Albert Hall.
As her clothes fell apart she stitched new ones with rags. She used pigeon feathers to insulate the plastic bags she wore on her feet and always refused handouts.
Alex Smith, who witnessed the accident, said he saw Miss Naysmith turn slowly and shout ‘ woah, woah, woah’ as she noticed the lorry, before falling to the ground.
Assistant coroner Kally Cheema recorded a verdict of death by road accident. Miss Naysmith’s life has echoes of that of Mary Shepherd, a homeless woman who lived in a van outside writer Alan Bennett’s home in Camden, north London, for 15 years.
Her story was told in the 2015 film The Lady in the Van starring Dame Maggie Smith.