NACSA NEWS Sep/Oct 1995
A Hampshire father gassed himself in his car because he could not cope with crippling financial demands from the Child Support Agency, an inquest heard. Gardener Clifford Peacock, aged 34, drove to a secluded beauty spot after receiving a letter from the CSA telling him to increase his maintenance. He connected a hosepipe to the exhaust of his Vauxhall Nova and fed it through a window with the engine still running.
Mr Peacock’s fiancee, Barbara Williams, said he was having difficulty finding the money to pay his ex-wife, who looked after their children. He took on more and more work in an effort to meet payments. She said: “He was becoming more and more angry about it.”
The jury was told that in June this year, Mr Peacock, of Worting, near Basingstoke, packed all his belongings and left the home he shared with Miss Williams. Eight days later he was found dead in his car at Abbotstone Down, Alresford.
Mid Hants Coroner Grahame Short recorded a verdict of suicide. He said: “The final pressure which caused him to take his life was the maintenance he had to pay, and the future must have appeared to be very bleak.”