My Sub‑Postmaster Dad Carried a Weight of Shame

Published: 27 February 2026
The English Chronicle Desk
The English Chronicle Online

For decades, Tom Millward, a former sub‑postmaster in the Norfolk village of Trunch, carried a burden far heavier than the ledger balances he battled every Wednesday. Convicted in 1999 of embezzling thousands of pounds from his own Post Office branch, Millward lost his livelihood, his home and his standing in the tight‑knit rural community he and his wife had moved to more than a decade earlier. It was only recently, in 2026, that his name was formally cleared — nearly eight years after his death and long after the Post Office’s Horizon IT scandal exposed catastrophic faults in the software central to his prosecution.

His daughter, Isobel Saunders, now 40, has worked tirelessly to restore the reputation of a man whom she describes as a devoted family man and respected local figure before the descent into legal and financial ruin began. “It was meant to be this wonderful rural idyll,” she told the BBC, recalling her childhood in the small coastal community of North Walsham. Her father and mother ran the Trunch Post Office together — her father handling the counter while her mother worked the shop. The family lived above the premises, integrated into village life, and were seen as pillars of the community.

That all changed with the introduction of the Horizon computer system in 1999. Designed to automate post office accounting, the new software repeatedly showed discrepancies that Millward could not reconcile with the physical cash and records. Despite having managed all accounts successfully for more than ten years, he found himself unable to make the figures balance. Hours of stress and frustration followed as he attempted to resolve what the system flagged as deficits that simply did not exist.

Unfamiliar with computers and overwhelmed by the technology, Saunders now believes her father was bewildered by errors that stemmed not from theft or deceit but from the flawed Horizon system. In desperation to cover the apparent shortfalls that the system repeatedly reported, he drew on personal savings and life insurance to plug the gaps — moves later interpreted as evidence of dishonesty. When auditors arrived and the post office counter was closed, everything changed. Millward was advised to plead guilty to lesser accounting charges to avoid a possible prison sentence, and he did so out of fear, not guilt.

The impact on the family was immediate and devastating. From owning a five‑bedroom home, they were reduced to living in a damp caravan lent by a sympathetic neighbour. Millward and his wife took low‑paid work in a crab processing factory to make ends meet. Saunders recalls how the couple, once respected business owners, became isolated and financially unstable. The shame he internalised altered not just his behaviour but his relationships. He became withdrawn and seldom spoke of what had happened, leaving his family to assume his silence was evidence of guilt.

Tom Millward died in 2018 at the age of 71, never witnessing the judicial shift that would vindicate him and hundreds of other innocent sub‑postmasters wrongly prosecuted due to the Horizon failures. It was only after his mother’s death in 2025 that Saunders pursued legal action to overturn his conviction. A solicitor experienced in Post Office scandal cases took up the cause and succeeded — prompting the Ministry of Justice to confirm that her father’s conviction will be formally removed.

“This has stirred up a lot of stuff that was buried,” Saunders said, describing the emotional journey that clearing her father’s name has forced her and her brother to confront. The sense of inherited shame, guilt and the profound disruption of their lives now finally have a factual context: a wrongful conviction rooted in systemic technological failure, not individual wrongdoing.

The Post Office has issued a formal apology for the scandal, with its chairman acknowledging that the organisation “did not listen to postmasters” and that many suffered years of pain. While compensation discussions may follow, for Saunders the primary relief lies in finally restoring her father’s reputation: a long‑delayed justice that comes too late for the man who once feared he would be remembered as a criminal rather than a hardworking rural business owner.

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