The body of 82-year-old Richard Parram was found in a Leytonstone underpass on January 21 by a passer-by, who said they often saw Mr Parram walking around the area.
Another witness said Mr Parram was often seen climbing up and down the underpass stairs as a form of exercise.
Rigor mortis – the stiffening of the body after death – had already set in, suggesting he had laid dead for some time before being discovered.
An investigation by the murder squad was later called off and his death was deemed non-suspicious.
When police entered his home the day after he was found, they discovered envelopes, left in plain view, containing large sums of money, which Mr Parram wrote were to pay for his cremation.
An inquest at East London Coroner’s Court heard on Wednesday, April 30, that his wife Emma had taken her own life around 20 years earlier.
Mr Parram’s family told coroner Nadia Persaud he had suggested he was under investigation for cancer.
The pensioner, of Barclay Road, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1973 and depression in 1999.
But there had been “no concerns in relation to his mental state” at either of his most recent GP appointments, nor any mention of cancer.
His only mental health referral in recent years had been to the North East London NHS Foundation Trust after he reported memory issues – but when examined, his memory was rated 97 out of 100.
Mr Parram, born in Walthamstow in 1942, was one of seven siblings. Only he and two sisters survived by this year.
When one of his sisters called him in January, the court heard, “he asked her not to call him again for a month as he was feeling depressed.”
He was found in the underpass with 19 stab injuries later that month.
A forensic examiner concluded the injuries were consistent with “self-infliction”, as “attack wounds would be more spread out and less uniform due to the more dynamic nature of an attack”.
He also had no defensive wounds. The knife he had used was found on the ground between his legs.
Mrs Persaud ruled his death a suicide.
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