Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Tragic deaths raise important questions
Guy Fincham, who lived with Mr Martin in Cossington Road two years ago, recalls his kindly nature.
“He was always encouraging other people with their music and was always really popular,” Mr Fincham said. Max really cared about everyone and had a very compassionate nature.”
Joshua Lambert-price came from Whitstable originally and had been living at the Tudor Road house for just over a year.
He formed a two-piece group with Jules Madjar called Houdini’s Hats which played gypsy jazz in the style of Django Reinhardt.
As well as busking in the street, they performed at venues such as La Trappiste in Sun Street, the White Horse at Chilham, the Shakespeare in Mercery Lane and Bramley’s in Orange Street, which is very much at the centre of the Canterbury music scene.
Mr Madjar, who lost his busker father Jean-philippe to illness in July, said: “Josh was a really talented performer I’m shocked by his death.”
Mr Truscott, a former pupil of the now closed Geoffrey Chaucer School, had also been staying at the Tudor Road house. He was keen a ukelele player and owned several of the instruments.
He was known to be highly intelligent and had studied music technology at the University of Kent.
The amount of flowers and messages of condolence outside the Beaney has been steadily growing in the week since the men’s deaths became known. They include a music score and a book about the US singer and songwriter Tom Waits.
An orange card stuck to the Beaney Wall reads: “To James, Max and Josh. Rest in peace XXX.
The deaths of three young men at the same house over five days has left the community stunned. They also leave numerous questions unanswered, not least what on earth caused the deaths of Maximum Martin and Joshua Lambert-price on the same day.
Police have concluded that their deaths are not suspicious but that still doesn’t answer the question of why they died or how, indeed, James Truscott died at the same house five days earlier.
His death may emerge to have been a tragic coincidence and wholly unconnected to the other two.
However, it is clear that the scene of which these men were all part very much involves alternative lifestyles and the use of mind-altering substances, be they legal or illegal.
The police have resisted discussing the circumstances of these deaths, limiting their work to the preparation of a file for the coroner to take into account at an inquest.
It may transpire that warnings need to be issued later about the substances circulating on Canterbury’s streets.
Last week this newspaper reported on the death of 22-year-old Frank Brown, who had taken heroin cut with a tranquilliser for elephants which is 10,000 times more potent than morphine.
The deaths of all these are tragedies. They have caused an enormous amount of pain.
And while we must until we get the answers around the deaths of Mr Martin, Mr Lambert-price and Mr Truscott, we can at least celebrate their lives.
They were clearly enormously popular and talented musicians. Whatever the circumstances of their deaths, this has been a black week.