Mum couldn’t take on the Post Office alone. I hope now we can clear her name

Sharon Kerrigan remembers the sickening moment her mother was accused of stealing £44,000 from the Cumbrian village post office that she’d set up – and how the shame drove her to sell the retirement home she loved, to pay off the ‘debt’

Patricia Kerrigan wanted ‘a little part-time job’, and so set up a village post office near the Scottish border (EPA/Supplied)

When she was young, my mum, Patricia, got a job as a telephone operator – she was one of the original “Hello?” girls, working on the exchange switchboards, putting calls through. By the early 1990s, having made a career in communications, she was retired from her supervisor job at BT, but still young, in her mid-sixties. She wanted a little part-time job to keep her busy.

Dad was a little older than her, a publican who had managed pubs all over Manchester. He was the relief manager of the pub in Bowness-on-Solway, a small Cumbrian village. Mum went up to stay with him and was really taken with the place.

It wasn’t long before they bought a cottage in Bowness-on-Solway, and had the annexe converted to become the village post office. Mum would open it a couple of days a week, and Dad would retire. I never lived there, but still have fond memories of the place. I got married there 30 years ago. Which makes what happened next all the more sad.