A life that ended in a frozen tent Neglect by couple cost baby's life

By the time baby Victoria died, she and her parents had been reduced to living in a tent in the middle of winter on the South Downs with insufficient clothing and basic supplies.

- Kevin Rawlinson

Constance Marten and Mark Gordon claimed they had no choice but to make their daughter live like this. In the end, she died. But that was not through a lack of money. They could have accessed large sums from Marten's trust fund to provide whatever their daughter needed.

Indeed, before they spent a single night in that tent, they spent thousands on taxis to take them around the country, and on hotels and holiday lets to live in.

So, how did the aristocratic trust-fund beneficiary end up in this position?

Marten and Gordon claimed they felt forced to stay on the move. They tried to avoid spending more than three days in any one council area, believing that any longer would give a local authority jurisdiction over their newborn daughter.

And, while taking whatever steps necessary to access the money may have helped them provide for their daughter, it may also have forced them to face up to difficult questions from the authorities.

Marten and Gordon had already been judged unfit to look after four of their children, who had been taken into care.

Serious concerns were raised among social workers after an incident in November 2019 when Marten suffered a "shattered spleen" at her home in London when she was 14 weeks pregnant with Victoria.

When an ambulance crew arrived, Gordon initially refused to let them in to treat her. Marten spent eight days in hospital having attempted, with Gordon's support, to discharge herself.

A family court judge ruled against the couple. The couple had "deliberately evaded the local authority in late 2019 when it was carrying out an investigation into the wellbeing of the children", according to the ruling.

The judge also found the arrangements made by the defendants for antenatal and postnatal care for three of the children "fell well below what a reasonable parent would be expected to provide".