The grandson of the 8th Marquess of Ailesbury has told an inquest he feared family members were exploiting his grandfather in the years before his death. Viscount Tom Savernake gave evidence at West London Coroner’s Court into the death of Michael Brudenell-Bruce, who fell from a bedroom window at his Shepherd’s Bush home on May 12, 2024, aged 98.
Viscount Savernake said he visited his grandfather weekly for five or six years before his death but increased the frequency when he “began to be concerned that various family members were taking advantage of him”. He described his grandfather as a kind and funny man who was devoted to his partner, Teresa Marshall de Paoli, a former model who discovered him after the fall.
The court heard that Mr Brudenell-Bruce had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia in March 2021 and suffered from depression. In December 2008, he had suicidal thoughts after the stock market crash and his move to London from Savernacke Forest, Wiltshire. His daughter, Kathryn Brudenell-Bruce, said that was the only time she saw him “seriously depressed”.
Psychiatrist Dr Claudia Wald, who assessed Mr Brudenell-Bruce in July 2022, said he told her he was nervous in his partner’s company and “had to walk on eggshells for fear she might ask him to leave his home and never come back”. He was “a lot more happy” with other family members, she added. However, both Ms Brudenell-Bruce and Viscount Savernake denied concerns that Ms Marshall de Paoli would physically harm him.
Housekeeper Joanne Chubb, who was at the house on the day of his death, said she saw Mr Brudenell-Bruce before he went for a lie-down and noticed his bedroom window was open unusually wide, but did not alert anyone because it was a hot day. She described him as “same as always” and “chatty as normal” in the weeks before his death, able to walk independently with “very strong hands”.
