Peterborough mesothelioma sufferer receives £40,000 award on day of his death

A Peterborough man died on the day he won his battle for compensation with his fromer employers after suffering a deadly asbestos cancer.

Russell Yaxley did not want to leave his wife until he was sure he had won a compensation battle but tragically, within hours of the joy at learning a heating company had agreed to pay £40,000 compensation for the asbestos contamination that led to his lung cancer, Russell was dead.

After months of pain and worry, Russell smiled and hugged his wife Mavis when he got news of his victory, but later he had a relapse and had to be taken to Peterborough District Hospital, where he died. At an inquest at Peterborough Town Hall yesterday, coroner Gordon Ryall recorded that Russell had died of the industrial disease, and expressed his sympathy to the family.

Afterwards, a tearful Mavis (60), who had given up her job as a cook at travel firm Thomas Cook to look after her husband, said: "He just wanted to make sure I was going to be ok, I think he was holding on as long as he could."

Russell (78), who was still an active volunteer at Bretton Woods Community School years after retiring as caretaker, was determined to win his case to make sure that Mavis would be secure financially – and to highlight the insidious health perils of working with asbestos. He was delighted on the day that a letter from his solicitor arrived at his home in Barnstock, Bretton, telling him he had won and Heatrae Sadia Heating Ltd, of Derby, had agreed to the payout.

Mavis said: "It was obvious he was getting worse, but that day he started smiling again. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders, but later he was going to the bathroom and collapsed at the top of the stairs."

Russell, a former army fitness instructor and keep-fit fan, died on May 14, from a disease that had been a silent health timebomb since he was in his teens. After leaving school at the age of 14, Russell worked in a sheet metal factory in Norwich for four years and part of the job was cutting up asbestos sheets. There was a lot of dust, but no one suspected it was deadly. Or that it would lie silently in Russell's lungs for 60 years before causing mesothelioma, an incurable form of lung cancer.

Speaking to his local newspaper The Evening Telegraph about his condition in April of this year, Russell had said: "I've been out and about all my life and then suddenly I can't walk 50 yards without collapsing".

Mavis said: "He was such a wonderful man, and when he worked at the school it was his whole life. There were so many people at his funeral and everybody who met him liked him instantly."

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