A woman who led an "increasingly reclusive" life hanged herself on the day she was due to be evicted from her home, an inquest heard.

Jacqueline Rice, 60, was due to be evicted from her home in Petersham Road, Ham, on February 11 this year after getting into financial difficulties.

West London Coroner’s Court heard landlord Rodney Figaro visited the home the day after the proposed eviction and found Miss Rice’s body.

Mr Figaro told the inquest on Friday, August 29, how Miss Rice was always "very nervy" and said there was evidence that she drank a lot more than she ought to, but had not seen her for three or four months before her death.

He said Miss Rice always told him her financial problems were temporary and that work would come along.

He told the court: "I obtained a possession order which required her to leave the premises by February 11. I had gone through all the necessary steps to obtain that."

Miss Rice’s niece, Natalie Rice, told the court she last spoke to her in the December before she died, but said the frequency and the length of her phone calls increased.

She told the court her aunt would speak about how her father handled her grandma’s funeral, with the conversations "going on for hours".

Senior coroner Chinyere Inyama asked Miss Rice if her aunt had ever self-harmed before, which she had not, but Miss Rice told the inquest a friend of her aunt said she had been to the doctor for antidepressants.

Miss Rice said: "A friend said that she thought she was going to do something about a month before she did it. She said ‘you’re not going to do anything stupid are you’ and Jacqueline said ‘no, not yet’.

"At one stage, she took a big bag of memorable stuff to one of her friends and said ‘don’t let it go’.

"She had been acting very strange. She was not taking phone calls or answering the door to people."

Delivering his conclusion, Mr Inyama, said: "There is no other explanation; Jacqueline Ann Rice took her own life."